I was looking over the SDL licenceand and the ogre licenceand noticed that both of them use the LGPL licence. know SDL says: # Include the source code for the version of SDL that you link with, as well as the full source or object code to your application so that the user can relink your application, or # Include a written offer, valid for at least three years, to provide the materials listed in option 1, charging no more than the cost of providing this distribution, or # Make the materials listed in option 1 available from the same place that your application is available. but the OGRE says: Previously OGRE was licensed under the GPL which required you to release the source code to all of your project (not just the modifications you made to OGRE) which put some people off using it. We had intended to release OGRE under a commercial license in parallel with the GPL for closed-source projects (to give people an incentive to try to use the GPL) but the reality of dealing with all the contractual / legal issues, coupled with the fact that we're all doing this in our spare time eventually convinced us to just license under the LGPL instead. now if i understand ogre right i don't need to release the source code of my project, just the update to the ogre engine itself but sdl say the I have too. I would love to use SDL for a small project i will be doing but if i have to release the source code that i am not going to use it. do i have to realesae the source code of my project if i use SDL? now in there faq they are: The simple answer is "Yes", just dynamically link with SDL and you're fine. You do not have to include the source code to your application, since the end user can drop in a new version of the SDL shared library, which is the intent of the license now when they say dynamically link the sdl does that mean that all I have to do is add the SDL.lib in the input under the linking tab in the project propoties on visual studio.net 2003 and then i don't have to release the source code on my project? [Edited by - 3dmodelerguy on July 20, 2005 7:04:40 PM]

The short answer is that if you statically link with SDL, you'll need to release all your source code. But if you dynamically link to a SDL dll you don't have to release your source code for the game.

Ok, how do i dynamically link it.

If you build your copy with default options on *nix (configure && make install ), use the development packages on OS X, or use the prebuilt libaries on win32, you'll be dynamicly linking.

To staticly link you'd have to build it specially yourself, or manually include the SDL code (.c/.h) in your program (which would be hard to do, at best)

well i use the SDL.h file in my code but the game will not run unless the SDL.dll in in the game folder on system folder, and this is on window.

so am i safe here?

Yes, so long as you are using the SDL dll then it means that users of your program can update to new versions of SDL without having to modify your program. I'm not entirely sure on this point but I believe you need to provide a way for whoever downloads the program to get access to the SDL source code so it remains freely available - a link to the SDL site or something like that.

also is there a offcial SDL forum?