Re: [pygame] Advice On Licensing

[Rene Dudfield <renesd@xxxxxxxxx>]

pygame is under the LGPL licence.

Basically it means that you can create your own code and not show
anyone else it.

If you make any changes to pygame itself then you need to give those
changes back to pygame.

Please read the whole licence for other requirements.

In practice many proprietary games have been released with LGPL code. 
The nice thing about it is many of those games have given back
improvements to the LGPL code.  So it's a fairly happy medium.

If you want to release some of your code, you could make a separate
library yourself.  Release those parts which you are comfortable, and
hide the other parts away like Scrouge McDuck.

It is not trivial to reverse engineer a python executable, but it can
be done.  I personally wouldn't worry about it though.  There are
things you can do to make it harder for people to reverse engineer
though.  But what a waste of time :)  Spend it making games instead.




On 8/9/05, kschnee@xxxxxxxxxx <kschnee@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm far enough along with my Python/Pygame project to have to think about
> licenses. I'm happy to release some version of my program to the community
> for free, in the hope that this will attract the help of musicians and
> artists. But because the core of the project is the AI, and it's something
> I don't just want to give away, I'm not willing to release all of the
> source code.
> 
> Is there a way to release only a compiled EXE (and dependent files, and
> media) rather than source code, and still have some sort of free license
> for some of the code? If I release the EXE, am I in danger of exposing the
> proprietary code to anything less than a determined reverse-engineering
> hack?
> 
> What about the model of low-cost shareware? That is, if I ever got to the
> point of having a viable program, what do you think of saying, "Five bucks
> gets you the full version?" (This sounds more profitable to me than
> charging $25 like some games.)
> 
> Kris
> 
>