Using Ruby in a commercial application?

[Chanon Sajjamanochai]

Hi all,

I just began learning Ruby a few hours ago, but it has been enough to
convince me that it is the language I want to write in.

I first decided to learn it because I wanted to learn Rails to create a
web application. But now that I like it so much .. I want to use it in
my current business (which is writing shareware games).

So I'm wondering, what do I have to do to be able to use Ruby in a
commercial application such as a shareware game?

From the License it says something about some files in the distribution
weren't written by the author.

I've tried to search for information on this subject, but couldn't find
anything.

Could someone who has used Ruby in a commercial app before give me some
advice?

Thank you!

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Hi all,

I just began learning Ruby a few hours ago, but it has been enough to
convince me that it is the language I want to write in.

I first decided to learn it because I wanted to learn Rails to create a
web application. But now that I like it so much .. I want to use it in
my current business (which is writing shareware games).

So I'm wondering, what do I have to do to be able to use Ruby in a
commercial application such as a shareware game?

weren't written by the author.

I've tried to search for information on this subject, but couldn't find
anything.

Could someone who has used Ruby in a commercial app before give me some
advice?

Thank you!

My "advice" is to seek *legal* advice from *attorneys*, *accounting*
advice from *accountants* and *programming* advice from *programmers*.

 

[Ken Bloom]

Hi all,

I just began learning Ruby a few hours ago, but it has been enough to
convince me that it is the language I want to write in.

I first decided to learn it because I wanted to learn Rails to create a
web application. But now that I like it so much .. I want to use it in
my current business (which is writing shareware games).

So I'm wondering, what do I have to do to be able to use Ruby in a
commercial application such as a shareware game?

From a purely technical standpoint, you're not going to be able to protect
your investment because Ruby is an interpreted language, and can't even be
compiled to bytecode yet.

I am not a lawyer, nor an author of Ruby, so I can't advise on anything
else.

--Ken

 

[Chris Gehlker]

My "advice" is to seek *legal* advice from *attorneys*,
*accounting* advice from *accountants* and *programming* advice
from *programmers*.

I got a grin out of Ed's advice, but, in fact, lawyers who know
anything about the legal aspects of the software business are very
scarce. Most lawyers will not give you an formal opinion in this area
that is backed by their legal malpractice insurance and without such
backing their opinion is worth precisely as much as mine and Ed's.

Having said that, of course you can use the Ruby core in commercial
applications just like you can use gcc. Many people have. When it
comes to some library, you are going to have to read the license on
the library/

 

[Richard Conroy]

With respect to licensing, I think most of the popular libraries ship with
licenses that are the same as Ruby's or very similar (i.e. they are very
friendly wrt commercial projects).

However many of Ruby's fancy graphical libraries that you may need
for game development require platform specific binaries. These binaries
may have different licenses than the libraries that wrap them.

Keep in mind that Ruby is a big download for shareware titles. This
is probably a non-issue nowadays, but keep it in mind.

If you are interested in protecting your code, and stopping people from
disabling the nag-ware (or whatever you use to solicit money from the
people who DL your games), there is very little you can do, besides perhaps
compiling your ruby code directly to an executable (some tools exist,
added bonus is that you might get a performance boost and smaller
download). You can also ship 'less game' in your shareware version -
so that a simple edit won't open up the full thing.

There is a book out there that covers game development in Ruby (and
python & lua) probably more technical oriented.

 

[John Gabriele]

Hi all,

[snip]

So I'm wondering, what do I have to do to be able to use Ruby in a
commercial application such as a shareware game?

You'll need to look at the licenses for each library/module you use,
and be sure to comply with their respective licensing terms.

If you package your game to include Ruby itself, then for that you'll
need to follow its licensing terms
(http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/LICENSE.txt) for its files.

From the License it says something about some files in the distribution
weren't written by the author.

Right. Different libs that you use (say, RubyGame, SDL, etc.) may have
licensing terms different to that of Ruby itself, so if you distribute
those libs with your game, you'll need to abide by their terms
(respectively -- possibly different terms for each library).

I've tried to search for information on this subject, but couldn't find
anything.

The licensing info for a given bit of software is usually in the top
level of the source directory in a file called "COPYING", or maybe
license.txt or something similar.

Could someone who has used Ruby in a commercial app before give me some
advice?

No experience with that.

---John

 

[Rich Morin]

Nolo Press has a number of useful books on legal
matters, written for a lay audience.

-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume (e-mail address removed)
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development