Topic: So, is the Credits and Licenses information current?

[fernewelten]

Hi folks,

As far as I understand, we're supposed to give credits according to the in-editor help topic, “Credits”, when publishing games, although this isn't mandatory. And the section, “Distributing your game”, has further requirements in subsection “Licensing”.

I'm writing games from time to time, and so I'd like to prepare a handy “Credits+Licenses.txt” file that has all these references in it, so that I can include it in the zip archives and reference it in-game in the Credits room.

So I was wondering whether the pointers in the documentation are even current? I suspect that this is a typical documentation part that someone has prepared at some time – doubtlessly with lots of diligence – but that tends to be forgotten in the daily chores and work and so might have become very out of date without anybody really noticing.

[eri0o]

I am not sure if it's up to date, but this reminds me that we should probably have an option to add a copy of the required licenses in each compiled directory eventually.

[fernewelten]

we should probably have an option to add a copy of the required licenses in each compiled directory eventually.

Oops.

Turns out that we do have a fine folder "licenses" in the Compiled directory that contains fine license information.

Only, it has two tiny flaws:

• It's with the Linux files in the Linux subfolder "data", not with the Windows files (that's why I've never noticed it until right now)
• The names of the files in the "licenses" folder don't end on ".txt". If they did, a simple doubleclick in Windows could open them just as easily as Linux executables can.

So just what has stopped us from moving the folder up into Compiled/Data and giving the files a ".txt" ending?  Since all files in Compiled/Data ought to end up in all the target directories, nothing much would change for the Linux side whilst all the other target OSs would profit from the license information, too.

[eri0o]

We can have the licenses on each build but I don't think it should go to Data, Data means game Data.

Also the licenses may have differences between platforms - like we could use a different library depending on the platform, for instance, the Android builds doesn't use MojoAL. So it's probably something that would be better on a per platform basis I think.

[fernewelten]

Data means game Data.

On the other hand, that's where the license information is kept right now AFAICS, in the Linux build.