single.php BennuGD to change license to Zlib (go iPhone developers!)

Today we’re announcing a very important change for the project. Please spread the word as much as possible.
First, we’d really like to thank Carlos Falo Hervás (Slainte) and José Luis Cebrián (Ceb) -the original Fenix authors- for their generosity in allowing the change.
Up until now, BennuGD has been distributed under a GNU GPL 2 or over license. This license has allowed BennuGD -and before, Fenix- to grow much beyond its initial scope but unfortunately Apple’s terms for distributing apps in iOS were incompatible with the license.
In an effort to make BennuGD much more attractive for developers aiming at distributing commercial games in the new -and very interesting- iOS and Android platforms, we’ve decided to ask the original authors for permission to change the code’s license to a more permissive one.
Today we’re announcing that BennuGD is changing licenses to the more permissive Zlib license. The change will be reflected in the source code soon but is effective inmediately. What this means is that:

You can now publish BennuGD games in Apple’s AppStore.

The iOS port, while being unofficial, works quite well and can use DCBs created with upstream BennuGD. We’ll publish more info on how to create and publish you games for iOS soon, but right now you can see a video of Puzsion for iOS in action below.

The unofficial iOS port is compiled from the same code as the Wii one and includes all the official BennuGD modules (minus mod_debug, but you can ask me for that one) and will probably also bundle mod_chipmunk and maybe Colombian Developers’ Bennu3D.

As a side note, we’ve got a kind of bitter-sweet feeling here. It’s a bit sad that we had to change license just because Apple doesn’t want to cooperate with the GPL. On the brighter side, this change might allow project just like my Wii port to grow: if you’ve got an official developer license from the console manufacturers, you can now also port and publish BennuGD games there, too. The change -finally- allows you to distribute your games in GamePark Holdings’ official store: FunGP, too.

We hope this change will attract many more professional developers to the project. If you are one and need help, be sure to ask in the forums: we’ll be more than glad to help.

Again, thanks to all those involved in making this possible.