I'm currently releasing my game engine under a LGPL license and I also plan to build several small games with it, also released under the LGPL. However I wonder what kind of resource, especially music I'm allowed to use. I'm currently looking on Jamendo.com for some cool music, and most works are distributed under a "CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0" license, which states that

Quote: If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Is the LGPL similar to that version of the CC license? If not, would it be possible to release my games under a GPL license, if that's compatible with the CC license (while using LPGL software like my engine, Qt, and the like)?

Its not the "same" so the question is "is it similar enough".... actually the full question is "does the person who released the music under the CC license think that the LGPL is similar enough".

Doesn't matter what we tell you. The only person who can answer that question is the person who released the music. Contact them and ask them.

IMO and IANAL, as long as you keep the data (music files among other things) separate from the code (executable), you should be able to distribute the music under a CC and the games/engine as LGPL, specially if you leave the music file unaltered, some may consider encoding into a different format an alteration or transformation, but I doubt archiving it (into a .zip or .pak for example) counts as modification.

Thanks for the responses. I will contact them and ask for permission.

Not a lawyer, also no experience with the GPLv3.

Also remember that the GPL/LGPL doesn't allow additional terms. Most of the people here are, I believe, assuming you are the original author (copyright holder) of 100% of the source code and that you haven't accepted any inclusions.

Also, the LGPL is not, in my opinion similar, due to the fact that the LGPL (as well as the GPL) intentionally permit commercial use.

Basically, the license says the author may release it under a similar license, if he agree's to release it under the LGPL (which permits commercial use and really doesn't restrict it at all in any way), I could include it in my commercial program very easily.

I don't think the author will agree. And the LGPL has problems with it being released under CC-BY-SA-NC. If you released all the code yourself, I THINK you can dual license the code under the LGPL with an exception for the music, and CC-BY-SA-NC, letting people choose either for the code. This should work since you are releasing it under that license. n.n But... the word 'only' is tricky.
You could, theoretically, classify the combination of the two as a single license which permits everything the other license does, and allows people to select only it and 'fork' which is probably more similar than any other license which is not identical ever could be.

Please be aware that the audio material would need to be removed to fork.

Again, not a lawyer. And I don't think many people will choose CC-BY-SA-NC.

Why are you using the LGPL?

[Edited by - electroreactive on January 19, 2010 4:21:40 PM]