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General => General discussions => Topic started by: LunaRebirth on October 04, 2017, 10:03:09 pm

Title: SFML dependency licenses
Post by: LunaRebirth on October 04, 2017, 10:03:09 pm
This may be an ignorant question, so I apologise if it is.

SFML is under the zlib license, which is great.
However, even when I statically build and link SFML to use the .lib instead of the .dll, it still depends on using the openal.dll file. I'm aware that openal does not fall under the zlib license, so does SFML then fall under both licenses?

I'm also finding various licenses on openal that don't seem to be consisted. Some sources like the wiki saying it's proprietary, while forum post suggests it's LGPL.

The above question is mostly out of curiosity.

Part 2 of my question:
Is it still okay to use SFML unmodified in my commercial project that I will sell?
Title: Re: SFML dependency licenses
Post by: eXpl0it3r on October 04, 2017, 10:10:12 pm
See the Licensing paragraph in the FAQ (https://www.sfml-dev.org/faq.php#licensing) and check out the list of dependency license (https://github.com/SFML/SFML/blob/master/license.md#external-libraries-used-by-sfml) in the license.md file.

tl;dr as long as you link OpenAL as shared library, you can distribute your game commercially.
Title: Re: SFML dependency licenses
Post by: LunaRebirth on October 05, 2017, 12:59:55 am
Thanks. That's exactly what I was looking for.
Title: Re: SFML dependency licenses
Post by: Hapax on October 05, 2017, 02:22:11 pm
Some sources like the wiki saying it's proprietary, while forum post suggests it's LGPL.
OpenAL is indeed now proprietary.
However, OpenAL Soft, which SFML uses, is under the LGPL licence so it's fine to use the version that SFML supplies in the way stated.