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[Peristarkawan]

Especially since fmod already works fine on both Linux and Mac.

[nornagon]

FMOD is a little dodgy here, it skips and stutters or doesn't play anything at all unless I tell it specifically to use the ESD driver. I haven't really looked too hard at clanlib, ISTR having some weird annoyance with it a while ago. I guess I should check it out again.

[ricree]

What ever happened with this?  Everything seemed to be going fairly well from what I could see, but the thread seemed to spontaneously die.  Did someone dig too deep here?

[demonbane]

Just to try to contribute what I can to this thread (though it does seem to be a bit on the dead side at the moment), my C/C++ skills are pretty rusty at this point, but I'm very well brushed up on licensing issues.

You can safely use LGPL code in a proprietary project, as long as you leave the LGPL portion of the code under the LGPL. In other words, either make no changes to it and distribute it as is (should be easy enough with SDL), or optionally make changes to it and redistribute the source for the changed LGPL code only.

This exact scenario is exactly why the LGPL was developed in the first place. If it was regular GPL you'd have to GPL the entire code base, but with LGPL you only have to MAINTAIN the license, not PROPAGATE it through the rest of your code. Hope that helps in case anyone is still concerned about the licensing issues around this.

[capehill]

Yes, using SDL by linking it dynamically (.dll, .so) doesn't enforce LGPL on your project. Indeed many commercial Linux games use SDL, for example.

If you linked statically SDL to your project, your project would become LGPL too.

Just use it (dynamically), many did before  

[failure]

I just registered to say that I really enjoy Dwarf Fortress, can't wait for the new version, and most of all would love to see a linux release!

[Slartibartfast]

Is the problematic section 6 in the LGPL you are refering to is
 

quote:6. Revised Versions of the GNU Lesser General Public License.

The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU Lesser General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Library as you received it specifies that a certain numbered version of the GNU Lesser General Public License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that published version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Library as you received it does not specify a version number of the GNU Lesser General Public License, you may choose any version of the GNU Lesser General Public License ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

If the Library as you received it specifies that a proxy can decide whether future versions of the GNU Lesser General Public License shall apply, that proxy's public statement of acceptance of any version is permanent authorization for you to choose that version for the Library.

?
(this is from LGPL version 3.0)

If so, I fail to see how that is a problem. since:
 

quote:The Simple DirectMedia Layer library is currently available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)  version 2.1 or newer.

means you can choose whichever version of the LGPL license that you'd like to follow (as long as it is of version 2.1 or higher)

Finally, according to the SDL website (http://www.libsdl.org/license-lgpl.php)
 

quote:To comply with this license, you must give prominent notice that you use the Simple DirectMedia Layer library, and that it is included under the terms of the LGPL license. You must provide a copy of the LGPL license.
You must also do one of the following:

  1. Link with the library as a shared object (e.g. SDL.dll or libSDL.so)
  2. Provide the object or source code to your application along with any libraries and custom tools not available with a standard platform development kit. You may also simply provide a written offer, valid for three years, to provide these materials upon request to anyone with a legal copy of your application.

If you include the SDL library in binary form, you should also make available the source code to the version you provide, including any customizations you have made. If you link to a standard version of the library, simply referring to the SDL website is sufficient.

Also, I kind of stumbled upon this cool tutorial for SDL: http://cone3d.gamedev.net/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=tutorials/gfxsdl/index
Just in case someone is interested in it. (Or in case Toady still doesn't know SDL)

EDIT: Ahh, could the problem be if you need (for example) SDL1.2 and that will no longer be available on the SDL website at some distant point in the future? (which will mean using a newer version which could be under any license)
I highly doubt the chances of that happening. And even if it will, the dll will still most probably be available (if not on the SDL website, then somewhere else), so there would be no problems.

[ August 27, 2007: Message edited by: Slartibartfast ]

[Toady One]

Nah, that's not the same Section 6 I was reading.  My comments were before Version 3, 29 June 2007.  In Version 3, it's Section 4.  The reverse engineering clause wasn't clear to me.  That kind of reverse engineering might be covered under fair use already, but I don't know.

[demonbane]

The reverse engineering bit just refers to the license terms that you impose on the non-LGPL portion of the code you're distributing. So, in the case of using the SDL, whatever license accompanies YOUR code cannot prevent people from reverse engineering your code for the purposes of debugging the SDL if they choose to modify their version of the SDL. In theory this means that if someone is reverse engineering your code for the purposes of overcoming a "feature" of your code that doesn't rely on the LGPL covered library (copy protection code, for example), you could still take them to court over it.

In practice what it means is that if you use SDL 1.2, and I decide I want to use my own version of SDL 1.2 with some of my own changes in it, and I need to reverse engineer portions of your code to get my version of the SDL to work, you won't take me to court. But if I reverse engineer your code and then publish specs online about how to circumvent some non-SDL feature as a result of that, then I still could be running afoul of your terms (assuming, of course, that your terms don't allow me to do that). That clause was put there specifically to combat Tivoization. So if you want to use LGPL code, you're perfectly welcome to do so, but you can't take people to court because the way they use that same code isn't exactly what you had in mind.

[Slartibartfast]

Use Allegro instead then   (Or actually, AllegroGL, since you want drawing to be hardware accelerated)

(Allegro is under a "giftware" license, which basically means "do what you want with it, just don't blame us if your computer catches on fire")

[ August 28, 2007: Message edited by: Slartibartfast ]

[Lavastine]

To be honest the market share for mac/linux is so small that I can't imagine it would be worth it to give a piece of all sales to these guys for the small amount of extra sales he would get from it. Unless of course they only want part of the ported sales.

[Shades]

Considering it runs under wine (and you can get wine for the mac on osx) it would seem a little strange to pay someone to port it.

[Baughn]

After reading the FAQ entry on linux/mac, I'm going to take a shot at porting Kobold Quest to wholly platform-independent libraries - SDL, mostly.

Is there anything I should know? Like, is anyone else already doing this (so we could collaborate), or would porting it no longer help much?

I'd also be willing to sign an NDA to do the same work on Dwarf Fortress itself. Yes, for free, if toady is listening - I'd consider this my payment for the game.  

[Toady One]

I think nornagon did something and X has it put together somewhere for KQ, though I'm not sure at this point exactly how far that got.  I was busy with this latest release and never got a chance to look at it.  I might again after I get most of the bugs sorted out.

[peterb]

I can confirm that the Mac port of Kobold Quest was working.  It wasn't that painful to get ported; I just think Toady was very busy at the time.

I would pay cash on the barrel head (and, as a somewhat well known game blogger, encourage other Mac users to do so) for an OS X native port.  There may be fewer of us, but we are loyal as hell.  And our marketshare is growing :-)

-peterb http://tleaves.com