Licensing question

SDL Development
1

Hi,

I have a question concerning the license of SDL, any
help would be highly appreciated.

In the FAQ on the webpage, it says that as long as you
link the library as a .dll, “you do not need to do anything”.
However, as fas as I understand (?) the actual license
text, you also have to “give prominent notice” that you use
the SDL, provide the license text with your program,
and in particularly display a copyright notice plus a link
to the LGPL in your program (if you display any copyrights
at all).

So, is the FAQ incomplete here?

And, how does the “prominent notice”/copyright have to look like?

Basically, the application in question is the independent game
Dwarf Fortress (I’m just a forum member, though, not the developer!).
There’s currently a Linux port in consideration, and that could use
SDL for the OpenGL powered ASCII graphics the game uses :slight_smile:

But being in ASCII, there’s not much room on the title screen
for extensive copyright notices and license links… :confused:

Thanks for any comments,

David–
Psssst! Schon das coole Video vom GMX MultiMessenger gesehen?
Der Eine f?r Alle: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/messenger03

2

IANAL.
If you distribute a binary unmodified sdl.dll/so - you need to include an
sdl-license.txt that is the LGPL file as well as information within said txt
file about where to fetch the original sauce (libsdl.org etc).

Prominent notice can undoubtedly be something as simple as the RAD game
tools thing that’s displayed during the Blizzard splash screens, or in help,
etc. Alot of things make use of LGPL libraries but don’t blatantly
advertise them because they’re very common libraries.

I would suggest a ‘uses sdl, see readme or sdl.txt or something for more
info’ line somewhere.

Many games have more than one splash screen, such a line would be easy to
stuff in one of them.

-Will