🎉 Celebrating 25 Years of GameDev.net! 🎉

Not many can claim 25 years on the Internet! Join us in celebrating this milestone. Learn more about our history, and thank you for being a part of our community!

Back to Games Business and Law

Is FreeImage Library really free of charge on commercial application?

Games Business and Law Business

Started by tracegame December 31, 2017 07:00 AM

4 comments, last by tracegame 6 years, 5 months ago

tracegame

169

Author

December 31, 2017 07:00 AM

http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/license.html

Not english speaker,so can't really understand what does the licence really mean.

First GPL2 and GPL3 are not what I want,I need MIT or something like MIT.

Second,they privode a FreeImage Public License (FIPL).

It's really really reaaaaaaaaaaaaaally long and make full language extreamly ENGLISH style.

Long for short can I use this Library free of charge and not giveup all my source code.Yes or No.

I have googled and got no infomation about this,and I did not see any indie game use this library,so I think it is not that free.

Not sure so I just need to ask.

_Silence_

1,076

December 31, 2017 09:13 AM

Use the free image public license if you want to use it with commercial applications.

Bregma

9,461

December 31, 2017 01:00 PM

I am not a lawyer, but I have spent a good deal of time dealing with similar license and distribution issues relating to software. My advice is not legal advice and you should not depend on it.

I gave the FIPL a close reading. It offers terms similar to the LGPL2.1, with some additional conditions.

Here's a brief summary of the license terms.

(1) You can use the library with your closed-source application to produce a distributable work without having the library's license term extend to the entire work. The combined work can be distributed under any license you choose.

(2) You can only redistribute the library source code under the FIPL, if you choose to (or are required to, see below) distribute it.

(3) If you make any change at all to the library source code, you are required to make the sources available under the terms of the FIPL. That applies only to the library itself, not the combined work, although your application must provide a way to communicate that a modified version is available and how to obtain it (ie. some lines in a dialog box or something).

(4) Mr. Floris van den Berg reserves the right to arbitrarily change the license terms at any time but not without changing the version number, so you should explicitly specify the version of the license you are using.

Stephen M. Webb
Professional Free Software Developer

frob

46,235

January 01, 2018 03:55 AM

That's my take as well.

Since @tracegame wrote he wasn't a native speaker, trying to simplify a bit:

* You can use it in your program, you DO NOT need to give up your source code.

* If you modify the library, you need to give up the modifications to the library.

* If you choose to give up your source code, you can't change the license of the library; it stays under the FIPL.

* In the place where you declare your software licenses you are using, you need to state which version of the library's license you are using. This is "FreeImage Public License - Version 1.0".