Commander X16

On 4/30/2022 at 4:23 AM, Wavicle said:

I'm most curious about how viral the license is intended to be. There are X16 Enthusiasts here making tools and game engines for others to use. Some of those could end up in the form binary library object files. Linking against a vbcc-compiled library will implicitly include binary data produced by vbcc into that project without the library user ever touching vbcc. Will the non-commercial licensing restriction then infect that project, or stop at the library? Well-intentioned library authors need to know if there is an implicitly viral license that library users will need to be aware of.

In my comment to that question I had assumed that the user of vbcc was also the user of the program compiled with vbcc. If someone uses vbcc to create a program without commercial benefit/intention then it is not required to obtain a license from me, even if someone else might use that program commercially. So it is ok if someone creates a library that is freely distributed and someone else uses that library in a commercial product. Of course this assumes that the two people are not e.g. employers/contractors of each other.

There are probably some grey areas but I think well-intentioned authors usually know if they are working on a hobby project or if they want to make money. In cases where it's unclear you can of course just contact me and discuss it and/or obtain a license.

This may also make sense in cases where someone starts a project that might turn out either way depending on how things go.