Hiya... While I make stuff to give away in the Free Stuff Forum (a lot), I'm working on a project that I'd like to sell as a merchant. However, I discovered to my chagrin that you basically get only one way to license the things you sell. I'm not 100% sure if this is true, but... Having read the license, it reads a whole lot like a Microsoft End User License Agreement... something I find very limiting, which is why I don't use Microsoft products all that much (Poser and Bryce are the only two reasons I even bother with Windows at all. I use Star Office instead of MS Office, etc. etc.) What I'm basically asking is this - is there a means for a merchant to license his/her products using an alternate, yet proven commercial license? In particular, I'm looking at the Lesser GPL (LGPL) license... full info is available at the Open Source Initiative. Corporate ventures such as Red Hat Linux, IBM, HP, Compaq, Novell, and many others all use this type of licensing on a good number of their products, and have no problems with it at all (basically, anyone who sells Linux products or services on a major scale use this license to do it.) I was wondering if I could do the same here, so that users who buy the things I sell can improve upon, reverse-engineer, or even sell the improvements to those items, so long as they in turn adhere to the same license they bought them under. This way Renderosity's interests and my own interests are secure, but at the same time I can give customers the freedom to truly express themselves with the things I sell, without any legalistic fears at all. Respectfully, /P

So, the way I read it is that you write your own version of the open source license, and the open source website reviews it to confirm that it is legal and proper. In that case, I think the most effective thing to do is to create your particular license, have it "officialised", the submit a copy to JennyK (jhandley@bondware.com) along with your intentions. Then she can read it, and tell you if anything needs covered, or if it is usable as-is.

P.S. You may want to be careful about mentioning any derivative items which have their own copyrights. (For instance, if the item is a blabla for Vicky 2, be certain to make clear that the open source rights apply to the blabla, but not to Vicky 2. Commonsense, I know, but it doesn't hurt to be watertight.)

No prob... You have to be careful to mention the specific files anyway, and seperate them from the already copyrighted items used to create the character. (which I take pains to do in my Free Stuff, let alone anything I'll be looking to sell :) Incidentally, the Lesser General Public License is already sanctioned (and was created) by the OSI, and I will be using it in the strictest sense. I'll gin up my intentions and send 'em to Jenny as time permits this evening. Cheers! /P