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by reidrac 2885 days ago
LGPL isn't great for games either.

One of the most celebrated changes in SDL2 was moving from LGPL to ZLIB license. All the linking requirements of LGPL are a pain for games and distribution.

1 comments

Then how about “GPL with the static linking exception” (used by glibc, which is statically linked by zillions of non-open softwares).

AFAICT, that license comes down to “You only need to publish changes to our GPL code, not your own code that uses our code”. So, it’s non-viral.

I think you meant "Lesser GPL with the static linking exception". IIRC glibc is "stock" LGPL 2.1 without any linking exception, so I may have misunderstood your comment and you mean just LGPL.

The LGPL is not viral but it has some requirements that are inconvenient when distributing a game, specially it makes static linking impossible.

You are right glibc is LGPL. It's libstdc++ I was thinking of https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/license.html

Looks like what I'm looking for can be found in MPLv2 https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/FAQ/

Ex: http://zeromq.org/area:licensing is currently LGPLw/exception, but intends to move to MPLv2 because it is legally more clear.