I don’t think that’s technically legal - if Maelstrom uses SDL, which is
LGPL, doesn’t Maelstrom have to be open-source, too?
Nope, that’s the beauty of LGPL. Commercial products can use it.
All they have to do is provide source to the LGPL’d library and any
modifications they make to it.
Why does the fact that it can compile on Win32 and BeOS make it
source-closed? Does anything that links SDL fall into this category?
Because Ambrosia Software has explicitly stated that it is a violation
of their copyright to make Win32 or BeOS versions of Maelstrom available.
If I make the source available, then in effect, I am violating the essence
of that statement.
In general, the license of SDL doesn’t affect the license of the linking
code at all. It can be under any kind of restriction or freedom you want.
I’m CC’ing the SDL mailing list so they are aware of these licensing points.
I don’t think that’s technically legal - if Maelstrom uses SDL, which is
LGPL, doesn’t Maelstrom have to be open-source, too?
Nope, that’s the beauty of LGPL. Commercial products can use it.
All they have to do is provide source to the LGPL’d library and any
modifications they make to it.
Why does the fact that it can compile on Win32 and BeOS make it
source-closed? Does anything that links SDL fall into this category?
Because Ambrosia Software has explicitly stated that it is a violation
of their copyright to make Win32 or BeOS versions of Maelstrom available.
If I make the source available, then in effect, I am violating the essence
of that statement.
In general, the license of SDL doesn’t affect the license of the linking
code at all. It can be under any kind of restriction or freedom you want.
I’m CC’ing the SDL mailing list so they are aware of these licensing points.
Couldn’t you just make a Linux-compile-only version of the source and
release that?On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Sam Lantinga wrote:
Scott M. Stone <sstone at pht.com, sstone at turbolinux.com>
Head of TurboLinux Development/Systems Administrator
Pacific HiTech, Inc (USA) / Pacific HiTech, KK (Japan)
http://www.pht.com http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp http://www.turbolinux.com
Couldn’t you just make a Linux-compile-only version of the source and
release that?
No. The source is the same for all platforms – no changes. 
That’s the beauty of SDL, and it also means that anything I can do to
make it Linux specific could be trivially removed.
I can talk to Ambrosia Software about it, but don’t expect anything.
I wonder if upwelling of public support for it would convince them…
(Don’t flood their mailbox, I’ll ask if it would help)