[Bf-committers] Licensing question for ported code

[Brecht Van Lommel]

If you're creating proprietary software that you're going to distribute to
others, then as a general rule you can not include GPL code in that.
There's various details and debate around when exactly this applies, but
the case you give seems quite clear-cut.

Note that the Cycles code is Apache licensed which does permit this. So if
the same Perlin noise shader is there you can use that code.

On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 12:12 AM Joel Sjögren via Bf-committers <
bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:

> Hello developers, I have a licensing question. I have been freelancing for
> a couple of days at a company that has been using Blender's Perlin noise
> shader and needed to get identical results using Unreal Engine and HLSL
> instead.
>
> Now we are considering making a plugin for UE with various ported Blender
> shaders. Of course, given that Blender is GPL (except for files here and
> there that even have BSD 3-clause or that are partially copies of code that
> is in the public domain) it would be fine to publish such a UE plugin under
> the GPL license.
>
> But would it then be permissible for someone else to use such a plugin as a
> dependency in proprietary code? Having read up on this a little on Google
> and FSF's website, the copyleft aspect of GPL (as opposed to LGPL) is much
> more pronounced than I had realized. I also checked the licensing page on
> your Blender website and I gather that it would be permissible to use such
> a plugin to create proprietary models and artwork. But if proprietary
> *software* that has the plugin as a dependency is *redistributed*... would
> this be in any way permitted?
>
> Best wishes,
> Joel
>
> P.S. It's been a long while since I last tried using a mailing list so I
> hope you get this message in the correct way. I also hope that I found the
> most appropriate sublist to send it to. Cheers
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