[SDL] Keep SDL Free Sam

[David Olofson]

On Thursday 01 January 2009, Jesse P. wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In case you missed it go here:
> http://www.galaxygameworks.com/
> 
> I think SDL should remain free.
> 
> How do you feel about this?

Who said SDL won't remain free...?

Even in the unlikely case that Sam and co-authors actually withdraw 
the LGPL option for some future release, the versions released so far 
are still covered by the LGPL, so you're free to fork a "new" LGPLed 
library off of any one of those. Your rights to use that code are 
protected forever; that's one of the major points of licenses like 
the LGPL.

Either way, from what I understand, Sam is trying to add something for 
those who are willing to pay for it. Apart from official personal 
email support, we'll be able to use SDL on platforms that an LGPLed 
library cannot support for legal reasons.

This should be most welcomed by those of us who may want to make their 
SDL based products available on more platforms, but cannot really 
afford directly supporting a bunch of different APIs.


<rant>

You could argue that this is supporting "locked in" platforms, but I 
don't really think a minority of developers refusing to support such 
platforms is going to change anything. These platforms still get 
enough attention to be worthwhile, so we might as well support them 
for the extra $ and/or publicity.

You know, make the misguided customers happy, to avoid them blaming 
*us* for not supporting their platforms...

In the long run, we might even nudge things in the right direction, by 
luring users over to our preferred platforms, where our software is 
available at a lower price. *hehe*

</rant>


Happy New Year, and my best wishes to Sam with Galaxy Gameworks!


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

.-------  http://olofson.net - Games, SDL examples  -------.
|        http://zeespace.net - 2.5D rendering engine       |
|       http://audiality.org - Music/audio engine          |
|     http://eel.olofson.net - Real time scripting         |
'--  http://www.reologica.se - Rheology instrumentation  --'