yep. either way, there would seem to be a conflict here though, though which license it violates (or if it does so) can probably be debated.

No, there's nothing in the D3D license that stops you using it in a GPL game.

The GPL license forbids you from mixing non-GPL-compatible libraries with your GPL libraries in your GPL application. In order to do this, you need to ask the original author of your GPL libraries to grant you an exemption.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs

If the library's author grants you an exemption to use their code alongside a commercial library (e.g. D3D), or if you are the author of the GPL library and grant yourself such an exemption, then there's no problem.

The other option is to argue that D3D is a "System Library", in which case the GPL grants you an automatic exemption.

the main thing is there is a certain level of probability that a game written using the DX SDK would also include some code from the SDK samples, in much the same way that code written against the Windows SDK likely contains small fragments copied from its help files

If you're ever copy&pasting code, you're walking in a grey copyright area. Reading help/sample files to get understand a use case, and the reproducing that use case yourself is very, very unlikely to count as infringement.

Copying a whole source file verbatim and slapping a different copyright notice on it, definitely is infringement.

The license on the samples is actually weakening standard copyright rules that apply to all sample code by default! They're saying that you can actually copy&paste&redistribute their verbatim code, but only under certain conditions.

and if they (physically) include any source or headers derived from the DX SDK while doing so

That's something that you never have the right to do, unless it's granted to you. Open source projects always grant you the right of redistribution, but many closed source projects don't.

Whether your game is GPL or not, you can't redistribute the DX SDK yourself; you have to tell your recipient to download it from Microsoft themselves (which requires them to agree to Microsoft's licensing terms).

yep. either way, there would seem to be a conflict here though, though which license it violates (or if it does so) can probably be debated.

No, there's nothing in the D3D license that stops you using it in a GPL game.

The GPL license forbids you from mixing non-GPL-compatible libraries with your GPL libraries in your GPL application. In order to do this, you need to ask the original author of your GPL libraries to grant you an exemption.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs

If the library's author grants you an exemption to use their code alongside a commercial library (e.g. D3D), or if you are the author of the GPL library and grant yourself such an exemption, then there's no problem.

The other option is to argue that D3D is a "System Library", in which case the GPL grants you an automatic exemption.

will have to look more into this it seems.

wasn't intending to annoy or go against anyone here, just stating things as far as I understood them.

if I am wrong about things, sorry about all this...

my project is not GPL though (and doesn't use any GPL code).

(some years back it did use a lot of GPL code, and I got worried about some things and went on a process of trying to eliminate any GPL code and any code derived from GPL'ed code, as well as most other code not otherwise written by myself, which set things back a fair amount as a lot of stuff had to be rewritten).

FWIW, a lot of my own code is MIT licensed (because MIT and BSD seemed most-free and least personally worrying, and otherwise seemed fairly similar).

though, there is still some GPL licensed data around (like textures and similar), which has remained worrying sometimes. (had gone a few times and tried to systematically replace all of it with my own art, but this is a long process as well...).

the main thing is there is a certain level of probability that a game written using the DX SDK would also include some code from the SDK samples, in much the same way that code written against the Windows SDK likely contains small fragments copied from its help files

If you're ever copy&pasting code, you're walking in a grey copyright area. Reading help/sample files to get understand a use case, and the reproducing that use case yourself is very, very unlikely to count as infringement.

Copying a whole source file verbatim and slapping a different copyright notice on it, definitely is infringement.

The license on the samples is actually weakening standard copyright rules that apply to all sample code by default! They're saying that you can actually copy&paste&redistribute their verbatim code, but only under certain conditions.

ok.

would have suspected this was fairly common though, like people seeing code that sort of does what they want, and grabbing and hacking on it until it does something more like what they want, then something might eventually end up being, say, 90% their code, with 10% as bits of code originally from elsewhere (sometimes beaten beyond recognition), or similar. (or them grabbing parts from the examples for using various API-call functions or similar...).

usually, I think if something has been fully sent through a persons' head, it is probably safe (like, if they wrote something with ideas inspired by something else), but would assume probably not if it is something like a verbatim retyping (like, line-for-line almost identical, as this implies something is probably amiss...).

and if they (physically) include any source or headers derived from the DX SDK while doing so

That's something that you never have the right to do, unless it's granted to you. Open source projects always grant you the right of redistribution, but many closed source projects don't.

Whether your game is GPL or not, you can't redistribute the DX SDK yourself; you have to tell your recipient to download it from Microsoft themselves (which requires them to agree to Microsoft's licensing terms).

ok.