[Bf-committers] cycles GPLed or BSD?

David Jeske davidj at gmail.com
Sun May 1 00:31:10 CEST 2011


On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:

> Had meeting with Brecht on this today; the API is currently rna-via-c+
> +, similar to python api but much faster. How to make such an API
> "BSD" or define license exceptions for it, I honestly don't know yet.
> A working bypass is to just code it via pipe() though, basically only
> data has to be passed on anyway.
>

The widespread interrpetation is that it's not legal to link GPL code into
the same address space as non-GPL (propritary) code. If allowing non-GPL
projects to use the renderer is important, one common way to solve this is
to put the entire codebase under the LGPL. The LGPL is basically like the
GPL for the library itself, but it allows linking an embedding that library
into other codebases without requiring those codebases be GPL.

It's also fine to leave it GPL, but like other GPL code, it will not be
something commercial software can link into the address space. It will
require a network/filesystem interface API so as to talk to it without being
in the same address space.


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