My current project is developing a TMX editor/engine for Android devices, and while it has progressed nicely in the past couple months, it occurred to me that I failed to look closely at Tiled’s licenses and I thought I should clarify things before going any further.
I’m not using Tiled’s source - I had built my app from scratch around the information provided in the TMX documentation and posts in the forum - but I was wondering if my project would be subject to Tiled’s GPL license on account of its functionality. Is it safe for me to think that my project is considered independent of Tiled and not subject to GPL or does it count as a modified version?
The GPL license applies to Tiled’s source code, not its functionality. So even though I hope you will release your editor in the same free software spirit as Tiled, you’re free to choose your own license if it is not derived from Tiled source code.
Thanks for the info Bjorn. I’m still torn on the pricing since I think a free version would be ideal but I need to reach a financial goal to be able to also work on an iOS version.
Mainly I’m just not comfortable with releasing the source at this point because it contains API keys for a few features - ie: Dropbox project syncing
Hmm, it’s a bad idea to include those in your repository. You should administer such keys elsewhere and include them in your build environment, so that they can be included in the build via defines or properties.
In any case, whether you open source it or not, I wish you good luck and am looking forward to seeing it progress! I think it will be quite challenging to make a productive map editor for a touch screen (there’s an Android map viewer on a branch in the Tiled repository, but so far I never got around to the editing part… I do still want to give it a try at some point though).
I hadn’t but it certainly looks nifty. Thanks for sharing the link!
I’m hoping to have it be a little more functional by July 1st, would you be interested in me sending you an Alpha tester invite once the new version is ready?
