Subject: Re: Rendering Engine/SurRender3D
From: Alexander Rawass (a_rawass@informatik.uni-kl.de)
Date: Mon Sep 04 2000 - 21:24:05 EEST
Hi,
Jari Saukkonen wrote:
> > I've read that you started using the SurRender3D engine - how?
> >
> > I had a look at their homepage and it looked to me as a commercial
> > product. Is there a licence to use it for free in GPLd games?
>
> No, we have a license to use it noncommercially from Taika Technologies (our
> employer, who is a SR licensee). This also means that our future releases
> will be binary-only for now.
Tux Iceswimmer says:
"Thou shalt be curseth by Saint Ignacius the Holyieth Gnu (a really
weird
hairyeth animal) , High Priest of the Free Stareth Foundation for not
letting
other people use the Source!" :-))))))))))))))))
Now serious, there are some questions I have about that:
Why will your future releases (I think you speak here of the client)
binary-only?
Will the SurRender3D library get statically linked to that binary or
delivered
as dynamic library?
Will the binary be available for free (at no $-cost)?
Or do you have to charge fees from the people who want to use the
client?
Will there be an open sourced client available (I could image an open
source
client that uses plib and a binary-only client with SurRender3D)?
Could you do the following: move all calls to SurRender3D from the
client
to a special class, therefore hide the calls to SurRender3D in the
client
code, so you could maybe give away the client source - exept that class
that
hides the calls to SurRender3D, this class could be shipped as a
black-box-
binary to link against.
I am asking so precise not to critisice you, but because _I_ am able to
do what I proposed above:
I do not make the calls to plib-ssg directly in my game, I have moved
all
calls to plib-ssg to class FleetSceneSSG, and I could very easily switch
to another 3D rendering library by re-iplementing that short class (for
example as FleetSceneSurRender) - this is something Steve Baker called
'Bloatware'.
Then, I could decide not to give away the source behind
FleetSceneSurRender,
just giving away the .o object file, or I could decide to only
build a binary linked to FleetSceneSurRender, so it would be for the
end-user
like your client - but I could still give away all sourcecode (exept
that
class) and that source would link itself against plib-ssg.
The binaries build with plib-ssg and SurRender3D would be fully
compatible
(in terms of game logic and net/multiplayer logic)
since only the rendering stuff differs.
Do you think it would make sense to simply ask those people behind
SurRender3D
about that?
I could even propose them to write this FleetSceneSurRender class
themselves,
not giving me the source, they could simply compile TuxFleet for their
engine and give out binaries statically linked.
Everything is possible. If they want.
Alex
--
Alexander Rawass
Email: alexannika@users.sourceforge.net
Project Homepage: http://tuxfleet.sourceforge.net
...but some day you'll be a STAR in somebody else's SKY...
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