Reasons why Blender should change to license to MIT
According to Google
"Licensing of Blender Games. Blender and the Blender Game Engine (BGE) are licensed as GNU GPL, which means that your games (if they include Blender software) have to comply with that license as well. This only applies to the software, or the bundle if it has software in it, not to the artwork you make with Blender."
What if the user wanted to specifically make games using Blender but wanted to close source their game, simply cause if they wanted to make a commercial game with ads support or the user has to buy the game to play it, the game devs have to legally have to make the game open source. The problem with this is that anyone can illegally copy the dev's code, modify it to remove ads or to make it free, compile the modified game and then redistribute it.
Even Unity (a closed source game engine) does not legally require game devs to make their games open source.
What's the problem in NOT using MIT license for Blender? Why can't it use MIT instead of GPL?
If I am incorrect or if I misunderstood something, please do correct me :)
10 Comments
The solution to this is to change the license of BGE alone, since that's what you distribute to people for them to play your games. Blender doesn't need a license change, only the BGE runtime.
According to earlier days of BGE, you actually only had to open source the blend file that opened the game and the fix here was to simply make that like a loading screen. This separated your actual game, closed source, from the GNU license, ie, the Blender Player and and and.
Link here: docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/game_engine/licensing.html
Not a great solution, but still something.
Unfortunately they can't license the BGE separately, because it is just as part of Blender as the modifiers are. Only a separate program could have a different license altogether. If the blend file solution is too open, then you can consider other engines like Unity, Godot, Unreal, etc.
Tbh, there is still a bit of time before BGE gets revamped with Eevee and I'm sure this issue will get another look then.
I suggest u try armory3d.org/ .. supported targets github.com/Kode/Kha/wiki
@darkstarmail: It is still part of Blender which means that users would still be forced to make open source games.
IMO "freeness" is not using a project that 1000s have worked on n closing it or its derivatives.
@darkstarmail: But if you have downloaded a software, you should be able to do whatever you please, you being restricted to do something is limiting the freeness as to what you can and can't do.
Blender should stay GPL.
From what I understand. MIT is Copyright .. GPL Copyleft MIT doesn't require modifications be open sourced .. Major bummer
The word "Open Source" is used a lot lately, heck even Apple is using it. IMO the GPL is the purest Open Source license, the GPL protects users.
If anything we need more GPL software not less.
@darkstarmail: But the games produced have to be open sourced, this is something I don't wish to do, plus open sourcing games can be a bad thing if you have ads on them, as people can easily modify the game and remove the ads, thus this can ruin people's profits. My understanding is that users are forced to make games open source if using the Blender Engine.
@darkstarmail: I have been told any modifications require the software to be open sourced as well if it is GPL licensed, but MIT does not require modifications to be open sourced.
@darkstarmail: I wish GPL was the purest form of Open Source, it is only MIT license that can provide the purest Open Source form. As if people were forking Blender and making their own distribution out of it, than they would legally have to make their own version open source. They are not legally allowed to make it closed source, unless if Blender changes license type to MIT. GPL ruins the "freeness" of what the user can and can't do with Blender.