I am wondering about the feasibility of inheriting from Irrlicht classes. This will serve a few different purposes. For example. I want to inherit the ICameraSceneNode class for at least two reasons:
The standard class as far as I know does not inherently allow for the following of an object/node unless that object is the parent (which means it will move with the parent).
It will allow me to instance the object before it is added to the scene. Unfortunately, the scene manager doesn't allow me to simply send a pointer but for now I can simply copy the object properties to the Camera that goes to the scene (and delete the temporary object).
This brings up a side question. Is there a way to attach "user data" to a scene node? Like a generic pointer member?
I don't think that doing this would be all that useful unless I can build my own version of the engine (because of reason #1). So this brings up a set of legality and practicality questions. Eventually I would like to build my own modified Irrlicht engine for the purposes of this project. I am developing what will be a commercial product that with any luck will be in widespread use. So keep that in mind.
Is Irrlicht under active development?
What do I need to know about the legalities of doing this? (I know I should give credit where credit is due...)
Is there a build for visual studio that I can use?
How do I get a copy of the full source?
Would the creators be interested in my modifications?
Um... that is probably because I didn't just ask about the license nor did I restrict my questions about the license to the license itself. It is also because the license on this sight doesn't say much. Instead it refers to another license which is not linked. And yes... I can search for it but that still does not change my question much since I am appealing to people directly involved with the development of Irrlicht.
1. Currently 2 developers are active (Nadro and me). Once in a while a 3rd developer shows still up (Hybrid), but it's been a few months since he did.
2. It's the zlib license. It's really short: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/license/
3.&4. If you have download Irrlicht (link on mainpage) it should already come with source-code and VS project files. You can also get current svn developer versions: http://sourceforge.net/p/irrlicht/code/HEAD/tree/
5. Sometimes, sometimes not. We always like when people post their modifications and patches so anyone can decide to work with it or not. But we are not adding too many ot the engine itself.
There is no userdata field for SceneNodes (main reason has to do with serialization). The typical solution is to keep scenenode's in your own structure instead or using a lookup with maps.
As I was telling hendu, not all of us are familiar with the zlib license so it would help to either link it, or spell out the details on your own page. I have looked at it since then but... just a thought. Sorry about asking for the source. I mistakenly remembered my recent experience with Ogre as being my attempt to locate Irrlichts source. They have a project file that doesn't work because the source code is missing. (Only the headers and a bunch of sample projects exist).
Sorry but some of us don't want to assume we know what you mean by specific terms (such as "product"). In today's world that can lead to lawsuits. I have never encountered such a "free to use" license before when dealing with such a formalized library (and I am still making an assumption here). So pardon me if I ask for specifics.
We don't have more specifics. But intent of a license text also counts in court cases and I think that's pretty clear in this case. I suppose biggest risk for law cases would rather be:
- We accidentally included protected code without knowing it (like someone claiming the code is free, but it was just copied from some website which copied it from somewhere...)
- Patents. Current team is mostly european where we luckily have no software patents. Not sure if it's still possible to write any larger piece of software without triggering a few patent mines in the USA.
CuteAlien wrote:- Patents. Current team is mostly european where we luckily have no software patents. Not sure if it's still possible to write any larger piece of software without triggering a few patent mines in the USA.
Living in the US, I can tell you that you have to file for a software patent to sue in court, and since niko hasn't done so, as long as - as you said - other libraries stay out, we shouldn't have any problems.
I'm not worried that Niko does sue us :-) The problem with patents is that you don't know when you step on them. So anyone of us could have accidentally broken a patent used in some other software. From what I heard currently around 1/3 of every software startup in the USA is sued by patent trolls. I guess we are probably safe as library authors as we have no business in the USA, but I am not a lawyer. But anyone using it to create a business in the USA has the usual patent risks and we don't try much on avoiding those (that seems pretty much impossible anyway as messed up as that system there has become).