License about rebound HOT 5 CLOSED

I understand the concern about commercial applications. IANAL, but as far as I can tell, there is no open-source license that directly restricts commercial use (GPL allows commercial use, but you have to provide the source and allow it to be shared, which automatically kind of restricts commercial use!). So I don't think that there is a simple solution that would allow BSD/MIT-licensed software packages (like astropy) to use REBOUND, while not allowing commercial applications (such a license would not be considered open source).

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@hannorein Even a switch from GPL to LGPL might be an improvement. Being able to treat the library as a library and respect its LGPL license separately, not requiring users to switch the rest of their project to the GPL would be a welcome improvement.

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@techdragon What do you intend to use REBOUND for?

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Currently the only use I have for Rebound is in games. Rebound is currently the front runner on a very short list of ways I can work out the proper N Body physics involved in a few game ideas I'm thinking about, and since a few of the ideas would actually use realistic N Body physics as part of the overall game design, I was motivated to find out how to do the physics right.

While I can happily use Rebound for my personal prototyping, if I ever want to release one of these games the fact that the GPL, and GPLv3 in particular, is at odds with the current dominant application distribution platforms, such as App Store, Steam, XBox, etc, prevents me doing so. There are terms of service issues about granting of rights that the GPL requires that the terms of service explicitly reserve, and with the GPLv3 and possibly even the LGPLv3 (its not 100% clear in the LGPLv3 case) there are issues with code signing of application bundles and v3.

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Thanks for the explanation. I don't see this use case as a good reason to change the license. However, you can always ask for permission to use REBOUND in such a project!

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