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by GhotiFish 4123 days ago
To be honest here. The strings that are attached are strings for people who want to sell...

Many open source projects do something like this, a dual license where the source code for the project is GPL, but the creator is willing to license it for something as non-gpl to people unwilling to release their source code.

This requirement set by unreal is very very analogous. They just have some shifted priorities, however for me this project now meets the standard of what I would consider "ethical".

Could it be better? Sure why not? It could be GPL dual license, people who want to benefit from open source but release closed source I think should have to pay, that would be better. However, this library can now be effectively used for open source initiatives. This is fantastic.

That's my estimation of the situation anyway, you perhaps do not see it like this. Could you go further into your position?

1 comments

>this library can now be effectively used for open source initiatives.

No it's can't be because UE4 is proprietary: http://opensource.org/osd

??

... so?

What provision on that page would I violate if I made an FLOSS project based on UE4?

#2, "The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form."

Unreal's license for obtaining the source does not permit you to redistribute in source form, so you can't comply with their license and still fulfil that point.

While it's certainly trivial now for most anyone to obtain that source independently, you can't include that source in your own project while still distributing your own project under any license that the OSD would label as open source.

I think there would be huge problem to what count as "your own project source" as it's going to will hugely use UE4 code. So I posted my thoughts on licensing above.
Your project going to be derivative work from UE4. It's mean Epic of course allow you to share it's source code, but you can't grant any more right to 3rd parties than Epic grated to you.

So no way UE4-based project will be FLOSS or even open source.