Oculus Rift SDK license problems

[2EyeGuy]

It seems like the Oculus Rift SDK license is not compatible with open source software.
I was hoping to add Oculus Rift support to Vireio Perception today, but it now seems like that is legally impossible.

[drgroove101]

Oh. My. God. Say it's not so! This sucks big time! I don't mean to be rude, but I hope you're dead wrong good sir!

What does this mean for Vorpx then I wonder? I'm guess he's going to have to jump through a lot of licensing mumbo jumbo to sell his software as well.

God damn suits and there dirty money!

[GAFBlizzard]

I am almost positive that you are incorrect. Can you please quote the part of the license that you are concerned about?

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that special rules about distributing the SDK and/or giving updated source back to Oculus only applies IF you modify the SDK itself.

If you just add Oculus support to a tool, or use the SDK with a game, it doesn't apply. The license even explicitly gives examples allowing this.

[cybereality]

I can talk to the team on Monday and try to get an answer about this. For now, just hold tight.

[2EyeGuy]

I don't mean to be rude, but I hope you're dead wrong good sir!

I hope I'm dead wrong too. It seems like I probably am, so you shouldn't worry too much.

What does this mean for Vorpx then I wonder? I'm guess he's going to have to jump through a lot of licensing mumbo jumbo to sell his software as well.

No, selling the software is OK. There's no problem for Vorpx. At first it seemed like Oculus were doing something strange, but that was just because I was tired and skimmed past the first paragraph (which redefined the normal terminology in the second paragraph to mean something unexpected). There's no mumbo-jumbo for normal commercial products.

My current concern is just that GPL stuff puts restrictions on what you can and can't do, and if other licenses ask for different restrictions, then they are incompatible. It's probably not an issue though, if we say the Rift library is a system library and we don't include the source.

[ChrisJD]

My current concern is just that GPL stuff puts restrictions on what you can and can't do, and if other licenses ask for different restrictions, then they are incompatible. It's probably not an issue though, if we say the Rift library is a system library and we don't include the source.

You can't just say that a library is a system library and have it be true. From the GPLv3:

The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an implementation is available to the public in source code form. A “Major Component”, in this context, means a major essential component (kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system (if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it.

The following article (http://www.honeynet.org/node/879) has this interpretation, which is easier to understand but that doesn't mean it's accurate:

1. It has to be shipped with the operating system, compiler or interpreter (a "Major Component" in the GPL's language).
2. It has to meet one of the following two requirements.

1. Its only purpose is that of mediating between your application and the operating system, compiler, etc. For example, NTDLL provides your application with an interface to the operating system‘s functionality on Windows systems.
2. It's an implementation of a widely used or standardized interface for which an open source implementation is available (which probably means that any closed source implementation of the C standard library qualifies as a System Library, since there are open source alternatives available).

Are there any lawyers around here? I can't figure out if you can add Rift support to a piece of software that is licensed under GPLv3 and redistribute it. Given the above, by my reading the Oculus SDK wouldn't constitute a "System Library" and I've never been any good at figuring out what is and isn't compatible with the GPL with regards to other source code licenses. I usually look them up http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-lis ... leLicenses

Obviously for a new license that isn't an option. So I'm left confused and avoiding GPL open source projects until there is a suitable reputable source with the legal know-how to say whether the licenses are compatible.

[nateight]

I want to be supportive of open source software, I really do. I'm no kind of professional software developer, but even from where I'm sitting it seems like the minute that damned GPL gets invoked, all hell inevitably breaks loose, particularly if it's a commercial project. I am not a lawyer and I don't know anything about licenses over and above what I don't know about any other blessed thing, but if I was calling shots at Oculus I'd have some people artfully rewriting any and all imported libraries from scratch and swiftly re-release 100% of the SDK under an MIT license. To do anything else, when the target developers are very often going to be producing for-profit, closed-source games, invites widespread confusion if not outright disaster.

[cybereality]

OK. So I was able to explore this more today. I'm no laywer, and honestly most of this is over my head, but what I gathered is that the Oculus license is not compatible with GPL. This is not so much about the choices Oculus made with the license, but more about how GPL works. So what I may have to do is re-license the Vireio software under a more permissive license, like MIT, that way it will be compatible with the Oculus SDK. I am going to look into what the best license is, right now I am leaning toward MIT since its basically no nonsense, but I am open to other suggestions.

[nateight]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40[/youtube]

[LeeN]

I was looking at licenses last year and I ended up deciding on LGPL. I think part of the deciding factor was the licenses that google code (where I store my code) had limitations on what licenses they accepted for projects.

You should check github to see what licenses are permissible, they might even have recommendations.