About using SDL in commercial projects

Is it against the open source license, to use the SDL source code in a
project, along with code that a company wrote, and when selling the product,
only releasing the SDL source code? I was just wondering because I wanted to
sell some of my games that use SDL.

Sean

are you dynamicly or staticly linking to sdl?

if dynamicly linking, that’s cool im sure.

if staticly linking not sure…

the intent of the licensing as i understand it is to make it so if someone wants to update or modify the SDL lib, they should be able to do so and relink to whatever program is using sdl.

so…if your using a dll or something, they could just drop a new dll in, otherwise it gets tricky…----- Original Message -----
From: twoeyedhuman1111 at gmail.com
To: sdl at libsdl.org
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:11 PM
Subject: [SDL] About using SDL in commercial projects

Is it against the open source license, to use the SDL source code in a project, along with code that a company wrote, and when selling the product, only releasing the SDL source code? I was just wondering because I wanted to sell some of my games that use SDL.

Sean



SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl

are you dynamicly or staticly linking to sdl?
if dynamicly linking, that’s cool im sure.
if staticly linking not sure…
the intent of the licensing as i understand it is to make it so
if someone wants to update or modify the SDL lib, they should be
able to do so and relink to whatever program is using sdl.

That’s correct. I distribute DLLs with my games and that’s it.

If you statically link, you still must provide a way to relink your game
with a different SDL. That isn’t the same as distributing the sources -
you could, in theory, distribute just your object files.

Using DLLs is still easier. Do you have any reason NOT to dynamically
link?

--Gabriel

Okay, so I guess if I just include my sdl.h and use an external dll I should
be fine, since thats dynamically linking. Then I guess I’d have to use the
SDLMappy procedures in a dll too. Am I right?On 6/19/05, Alan Wolfe wrote:

are you dynamicly or staticly linking to sdl?
if dynamicly linking, that’s cool im sure.
if staticly linking not sure…
the intent of the licensing as i understand it is to make it so if
someone wants to update or modify the SDL lib, they should be able to do so
and relink to whatever program is using sdl.
so…if your using a dll or something, they could just drop a new dll in,
otherwise it gets tricky…

----- Original Message -----
From: @twoeyedhuman
To: sdl at libsdl.org
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:11 PM
Subject: [SDL] About using SDL in commercial projects

Is it against the open source license, to use the SDL source code in a
project, along with code that a company wrote, and when selling the product,
only releasing the SDL source code? I was just wondering because I wanted to
sell some of my games that use SDL.

Sean



SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl

I’m not sure about SDLMappy, it depends on the licensing and i cant seem to find the license for it.

You might try looking at the headers or something for the requirements.

if it has the same license as sdl then yeah, if it says its public domain or something you can staticly link w/o a problem. if your confused you can always email the author(s) and ask

hope that helps (:----- Original Message -----
From: twoeyedhuman1111 at gmail.com
To: sdl at libsdl.org
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 9:21 AM
Subject: Re: [SDL] About using SDL in commercial projects

Okay, so I guess if I just include my sdl.h and use an external dll I should be fine, since thats dynamically linking. Then I guess I’d have to use the SDLMappy procedures in a dll too. Am I right?

On 6/19/05, Alan Wolfe <@atrix2> wrote:
are you dynamicly or staticly linking to sdl?

if dynamicly linking, that's cool im sure.

if staticly linking not sure...

the intent of the licensing as i understand it is to make it so if someone wants to update or modify the SDL lib, they should be able to do so and relink to whatever program is using sdl. 

so...if your using a dll or something, they could just drop a new dll in, otherwise it gets tricky...
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: twoeyedhuman1111 at gmail.com 
  To: sdl at libsdl.org 
  Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2005 5:11 PM
  Subject: [SDL] About using SDL in commercial projects

   
  Is it against the open source license, to use the SDL source code in a project, along with code that a company wrote, and when selling the product, only releasing the SDL source code?  I was just wondering because I wanted to sell some of my games that use SDL. 

  Sean

  _______________________________________________
  SDL mailing list
  SDL at libsdl.org
  http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl


SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl

if it has the same license as sdl then yeah, if it says its public
domain or something you can staticly link w/o a problem. if your
confused you can always email the author(s) and ask

hope that helps (:

I’ve used SDL in lots of commercial games (probably getting close to 20
now, some downloadable puzzle games, some on the shelves at Best
Buy)…each LGPL library needs to have a means to be replaced with a
different version that the user might want. This means you can do a few
things:

  1. Open source your game, if you are so inclined, but it’s not required.
  2. Make the object files for your game available, so the user can relink
    it with a new SDL, but this is a pain in the butt.
  3. Always link against SDL as a shared library that you ship with the
    game. Then the user can just replace it with their version of the library.
  4. Supply a statically linked version of the game as the primary
    version, and a dynamically linked one as “unsupported” … Loki Software
    used to do this, so they could guarantee the integrity of the build they
    support, but still fulfill the LGPL license.

For most of my work, I found #3 has the least hassle for everyone
involved. The LGPL says you have to make the source to the LGPL
libraries available upon request, but in five years of doing
professional games with LGPL middleware, I’ve never had a single
request…and if I did, in most cases, pointing someone to libsdl.org
would be sufficient. For UT2003, since we had room on the disc, we just
shipped tarballs of SDL and OpenAL source with the retail game.

When I have good fixes to SDL from these games, I either commit them to
CVS (luxury of having write access), or at least post them to the
mailing list if they aren’t good, general purpose patches. If someone
needed them, I could at least point them to the mailing list archives.
Most people don’t make changes to LGPL libraries and just use them as-is.

Bottom line:
In most cases, ship each LGPL package as a shared library with the game
and be done with it. Ship any patches to SDL to this list. That’s about it.

–ryan.