LOVE Licensing Question

[Evil Telephone]

Greetings. I've been browsing the 'Projects and Demos' forum and have noticed a few discussions of licensing the project or demo that is being posted. If I were to post something and wanted for people to be able to, if they so desire, use and modify the source and related media files however they want, what would I state as a license type? Sorry, I'm a bit naive about software licensing. Thanks for the help.

[philnelson]

If you intend to retain no ownership over the original code, you can simply state "I release this code into the public domain". If you'd like to retain some of your rights as creator, you can learn a whole lot by visiting Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.com.

[Evil Telephone]

Thanks for the link. I'll do some research on that site to see what suits me best.

[Merkoth]

However they like? No strings attached? Try the BSD license:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

If you want to prevent people from doing closed-source derivatives, check out the GPL either version 2 or 3:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.php
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

Since the GPL doesn't apply very well to media files like audio, video and bitmaps, you might want to check out the Creative Commons licenses:
http://creativecommons.org/license/

If you don't really give a rat's ass about how your stuff is used you can always use the What The Fuck You Want Public License:
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/

Or just go with good ol' Public Domain, of course. In this case you MUST state that your work falls into the public domain and I recommend write a few sentences more to state that you don't offer any kind of warranty over the work and/or its derivatives.

Hope this helps

[Evil Telephone]

Wow, this does help! Thank you so much.

[Skofo]

If you'd like to retain some of your rights as creator, you can learn a whole lot by visiting Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.com.

NO! Bad idea! Creative Commons is specifically designed for creative works, not for software source code (even though code can be creative). http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FFAQ#Ca ... icenses.3F

Merkoth's advice is better, but still not completely solid.

The BSD license is a popular example of a permissive free software license, which allows people to derive works from yours and release it closed. It is definitely not "use however you like with no strings attached", though. I'd look further into it if you're interested. Another popular example of a permissive license is the zlib license, which is relatively simplistic and it is what LOVE is licensed under.

The GPL is a popular example of a strong copyleft license, which allows people to derive works from yours, as long as they distribute it under the same copyleft, meaning that your code can't be reredistributed as anything but free software. The GPL is also the most popular free software license out there.

The LGPL aims to be a compromise between strong copyleft licenses and permissive licenses, originally written for software libraries, but it can be used for other things too (like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org).

I strongly recommend you look up the wiki articles for any license you plan to release your software under, and perhaps even read the license itself. It helps to be thorough.