Filters and the GPL (GNU General Public License)

jits,

you are not 'creating textures under the GPL license' when using FF. you are creating textures under the FF license, which gives you free right of use of those textures. the 'source' in this case, which the GPL is asking you to include, isnt the FF filter, but rather the texture itself. or, so this non-lawyer would read it. you could certainly mention that the textures were created with FF, but you certainly dont have to provide the filter itself. it would be like creating an image in photoshop. you certainly arent going to provide a copy of photoshop, even though that's the 'source' in one sense.

technically you dont even have to provide that picture your talking about you could copy the binary code into notepad and release it that way and someone would have to copy it and compile it in a binary compiler ---your releaseing the code
In fact what you are discussing would violate ff's intellectual property rights

You only have to worry about the end result in your case the texture and material files only
though technically Im not sure you would even have to release the material files as well you might be able to only release the image
as far as ff goes your in the clear to release your photo but the filter is another matter They might be more then happy to allow you to include the filter but under the understanding that end users would ultimatly have to purchass ff to use it

Quote
CFandM wrote: Only the source

That being GPL'd Quake2 engine...

Thanks for the reply, Vladimir. The FF library upload license said it was non-exclusive, so I don't see any reason why I couldn't release filters under multiple licenses. Like you, I'm not a lawyer, though.

Kraellin: The GPL is about distributing works, not creating them. If you distribute something released under the GPL, you must also, upon request, provide the source to that work. If I were to release an image created in Photoshop under the GPL, I would certainly consider the .psd file to be the source and provide that for download as well.

Actually, I misread that. No, you don't have to include the executables used to compile your work. If I write a program in Microsoft Visual Studio, I don't have to include Visual Studio when I distribute the program under the GPL (nor would it be legal to do so). I distribute the .c, .h, etc. source code files which get compiled into my program. Filter Forge works in almost the same way. You create XML "source" files which get "compiled" into textures.

My filter combines a standard technique that has been around for years, with some moves I thought of. I (and others) have posted tutorials on the Internet about how we do these kinds of things. With so much common knowledge out there, it is impossible to not have similar filters. I hope the idea of a person owning the license to a filter he/she creates does not lead to unpleasantness when filters overlap.