14 Mar, 2010, Blinx wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Would be nice if someone could look into this (legality wise).

This is my own, custom code-base.


Codename: Ffnir

Language: Dark Basic Professional (28. April 2009) + Multisync* (to handle more than the 269 players the original arrays can handle)
API: DirectX 9.0c
Scripting language: Unity (LUA for Dark Basic)
Parser: derives from my earlier text-adventure parser ("The Hobbit" inspired)
Graphics: proprietary data format
Audio: Not sure. flac (BSD/GPL), Musepack (LGPL), Ogg Vorbis (BSD derivative) and Wave Audio are all possible proposers. So the decision might come down to audio quality and license compatibility.
Font: Royal (freeware with no specific license but for commercial use, according to Fontspace)


So. Any foreseeable legal issues?


*Freeware with no specific license tied to it. Going to contact the author before use
14 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I don't see any obvious problems from what you've written, although I'd be careful when mixing licences. But if you want a legal opinion you really should contact a lawyer.
14 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
As KaVir said, if you really care about legal issues, you should talk to a lawyer. People here can give you opinions, sometimes pretty good ones, but not legal advice. Things get complicated when mixing licenses, deriving from other things, etc.

BTW, it's Lua, not "LUA".
14 Mar, 2010, Blinx wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
As for the mixing of licenses:

I'd like to keep most of the code closed-source/in-house (with the exception of the network socket bit, since it's using Multisync). Would that work, as well.


Quote
But if you want a legal opinion you really should contact a lawyer.


That's the one thing I'd like to avoid.

I would probably go for it, if I lived in the US or UK. However, I'm not going anywhere but Switzerland and Germany for the next 10 years.
Both countries are known for expensive lawyers' fees. Last time my dad consulted an advocate, that guy charged him 100 euros for half an hour work (checking my dad's business EULA, which is roughly half a page)

I could only imagine what this "extensive" research would cost me.

Probably cheaper to get sued. At least the barrister would be paid from my taxes, which I pay nontheless :lol:

EDIT: Sorry for getting slightly childish. 2 AM here. If it wasn't for the storm, Dreamland would be the only MUD I'm playing.
14 Mar, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, if you don't want to talk to a lawyer, and don't really care about the risk of being sued, I guess that kind of answers your question. :smile:

Nonetheless you'd be better off asking here if people thought your activities were "morally ok" than for people to look at something "legality-wise". Nothing you get here will be actual legal advice, although again some opinions are more informed than others, and perhaps some opinions are better than nothing. Speaking for KaVir for a moment, I don't think that he or I were trying to tell you that your questions are dumb, but that you need to be aware that you're not getting legal advice.

Many of the licenses you've given are strictly speaking incompatible, in that some are more restrictive than others. For example, mixing GPL and BSD/MIT means that the BSD/MIT stuff must fall under the GPL's restrictions. There are also interesting questions to be asked when it comes to using source vs. binary libraries (this is a big difference for GPL/LGPL, for example).
14 Mar, 2010, Blinx wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Gotcha.

I'm fully aware that I won't get any kind of 100% accurate answer to my legal/moral questions. However, some of you seem to know quite a lot about all this LGPL, GPL, BSD outlandish.


BTW: I've made a decision in the sound department. Ogg Vorbis is my format of choice.

It's libraries/SDKs are licensed under the BSD ( http://www.xiph.org/licenses/bsd/ ) and it even comes as part of the Enhancements Expansion Pack (those "money machine" plugins are probably the reason most programmers see Dark Basic as nothing more but an expensive toy. But this ongoing support is quite handy, actually).

Still not sure on what to do with all that power. DirectX 9.0c sounds a bit extreme for something like a text-based online game with some nifty graphical stills and sound from an old, wooden Casio synthesizer.
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