[tiled-user] Plug-in Licensing Issue

[Bjørn Lindeijer]

Hello Matt,

I think what you could do is to dual license the necessary data
classes and reflection functionality, and include it in your plugin as
GPL but in your engine under a different license. Would this be a
problem for you?

If we don't require you to license your plugins under GPL, you could
undermine part of the freedom of Tiled users.

Kind regards,
Bjørn

On 2/6/07, Matt Hopkins <matt at nulch.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been looking around for a tilemap editor for the engine I'm working on
> and so far it looks like Tiled is the perfect choice.  It does a good job of
> keeping the Tilemap and Tileset separate so they can be used independently,
> which is something I found missing in other editors.  The only potential
> problem I see is with the GPL.
>
> Currently, my engine is closed source (this may or may not change as it
> matures).  The problem occurs because my engine handles the persistence of
> all game data automatically via reflection (including tilemaps/tilesets), so
> the best way to write the exporter/importer would be to link to my engine
> jar files, fill my engine's map and tileset objects up with data from Tiled,
> then use the engine's automatic persistence handler to do the actual
> saving/loading.
>
> The problem with this is that it would require me to link my engine to my
> Tiled plug-in, therefore forcing me to accept the terms of the GPL within my
> entire engine.
>
> Would it be allowable for me to use Tiled under the terms of the LGPL
> instead?  As I understand it, that would allow Tiled to link to other JARs
> (such as my exporter plugin, and indirectly, my engine) without having to
> make the linked JARS open source.
>
> Thanks for the great work that's been done on Tiled so far and I look
> forward to future releases!
>
> --Matt