Barring unanticipated objections from contributors we’ve forgotten, future versions of Oolite will be distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2, from here on referred to as the GPL. Resources – models, textures, sounds, images – will also be distrubuted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license (herafter known as CC-by-nc-sa-3). (If you’re a contributor we’ve forgotten, and have an unanticipated objection, please make it known as soon as possible.)
What this means:
All previous versions of Oolite may still be distributed (in source and object form) under the same licenses as before.
Existing derivative works which conformed to the license – that is, works using parts of Oolite’s source code or original resources, and distributed under CC-by-nc-sa-2 (or the previous modified BSD license, for older derivative works) – are not affected; they may continue to be distributed under their current license in perpetuity.
However, authors of such works may choose to distribute their works under the GPL instead.
New derivative works based on Oolite 1.65 or earlier may be distributed under either CC-by-nc-sa-2 or the GPL.
New derivative works based on versions of Oolite released after today (27 February 2007) may be distributed under the GPL or CC-by-nc-sa-3, excepting derivative works which contain Oolite source code, which may only be distributed under the GPL (except where otherwise stated in the code).
This decision was taken by agreement between Giles Williams, Dylan Smith, David Taylor and myself, Jens Ayton, through an agonizing process of forgetting about it for months at a time.
For discussion or clarification of the licensing terms, see this thread.
This decision was taken by agreement between Giles Williams, Dylan Smith, David Taylor and myself, Jens Ayton, through an agonizing process of forgetting about it for months at a time.
"My name is Giles Williams and I endorse this message."
"The planet Rear is scourged by well-intentioned OXZs."
Update: while the text above, and various other places, refer specifically to the GPL version 2, Oolite is more precisely licensed under the GPL version 2 or any later version. In particular, this means it may be combined with GPL version 3 code, such as future versions of GNUstep.
