License

| Licenses

Inform is free and runs on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Solaris. It uses many different programs, tools, and libraries to do so; these are all copyrighted by different people, and released under several different software licenses.

The GNOME Inform 7 program is a graphical user interface to the Inform 7 command-line tools. GNOME Inform 7 is designed for the GNOME desktop, but it does not necessarily require you to use the GNOME desktop, just the GNOME libraries. It is copyright © 2006–2009 P.F. Chimento, and is released under the GNU General Public License, version 3 (GPLv3). See the file AUTHORS, or select Help → About and then press the Credits button, for a list of contributors.

Other than portions to which GNOME Inform 7's author and contributors hold the copyright, GNOME Inform 7's source code contains portions which are:

- Copyright © 2007 Nick Gravgaard and subject to the GPLv3;
- Copyright © 2007–2008 The GTK+ Team and subject to the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1);
- Copyright © 2004 Tim-Philipp Müller and subject to the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2).

Finally, and perhaps not surprisingly, it contains portions derived from David Kinder's Inform 7 user interface for Windows, which is copyright © 2006–2009 David Kinder, and released under the GPLv2.

Some of the underlying command-line tools are open source software, and some are not. The Inform 7, or Natural Inform, compiler is copyright © 2005–2009 Graham Nelson and distributed under the traditional Inform license: it is free, and imposes no significant restrictions on even commercial use, but is not yet open source in the sense of the GPL (even though source code is likely to be published in due course): in particular, those wishing to develop variant forms must apply for copyright permission.

The open-source tools are Inform 6, cBlorb, and Inweb. They are copyright © 1993–2009 Graham Nelson, and their source code is distributed verbatim along with GNOME Inform 7's source code. Inweb is only used for compiling cBlorb and is therefore not included in binary distributions of GNOME Inform 7. Inweb and cBlorb are released under the Artistic License 2.0, whereas the Inform 6 compiler is published under the original Inform license, or under the Artistic License 2.0, at the user's choice.

Several programs are used for game interpretation. Their source code is distributed in a modified form along with this program's source code. One of these is Frotz, which is copyright © Stefan Jokisch, and released under the GPLv2.

Another is Glulxe, which is copyright © 1999 Andrew Plotkin. For more information on Glulxe, go to http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/index.html.

The third and final one is Git, which is copyright © 2003 Iain Merrick, and released under an MIT License.

The program used to display these interpreters in the main application is a modified version of the Gargoyle Glk library, which is copyright © 2006 Tor Andersson, and which is released under the GPLv2.

The Gargoyle Glk library's source code, which is distributed in a modified form along with this program's source code, contains portions which are copyright © 1989, 1991 by Jef Poskanzer and distributed under the following terms:

> Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

It also contains files belonging to the Glk specification which are copyright © 1998–2004 Andrew Plotkin. For more information, go to http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glk/index.html.

In addition, the Gargoyle Glk library is distributed with two font families: the Luxi fonts and the Bitstream Charter fonts.

The Luxi fonts are copyright © 2001 by Bigelow & Holmes Inc. The Luxi font instruction code is copyright © 2001 by URW++ GmbH. All Rights Reserved. Luxi is a registered trademark of Bigelow & Holmes Inc. The fonts are distributed under these terms.

The Bitstream Charter fonts are designed by Matthew Carter, copyright © 1989–1992 Bistream Inc., Cambridge, MA, and distributed under the following terms:

> You are hereby granted permission under all Bitstream propriety rights to use, copy, modify, sublicense, sell, and redistribute the 4 Bitstream Charter® Type 1 outline fonts and the 4 Courier Type 1 outline fonts for any purpose and without restriction; provided, that this notice is left intact on all copies of such fonts and that Bitstream's trademark is acknowledged as shown below on all unmodified copies of the 4 Charter Type 1 fonts. BITSTREAM CHARTER is a registered trademark of Bitstream Inc.

This concludes the copyright and licensing information for the software that you received when you downloaded this program. However, GNOME Inform 7 also links to several software libraries, and although these libraries are not distributed along with this software, the terms of many of these libraries' licenses require, as I understand them, that their copyright notices and license terms be reproduced here. In order to be fair, I have reproduced all of them:

- GLib 2, copyright © 2007–2008 The GTK+ Team, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- GDK 2, copyright © 2007–2008 The GTK+ Team, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- GdkPixbuf 2, copyright © 2007–2008 The GTK+ Team, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- GTK+ 2, copyright © 2007–2008 The GTK+ Team, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- Pango, copyright © 2007–2008 The GTK+ Team, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- Libgnome 2, copyright © 2005–2009 The GNOME Project, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- LibgnomeUI 2, copyright © 2005–2009 The GNOME Project, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- GConf 2, copyright © 2005–2009 The GNOME Project, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- GnomeVFS 2, copyright © 2005–2009 The GNOME Project, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- LibbonoboUI 2, copyright © 2005–2009 The GNOME Project, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- GtkSourceView 2, copyright © 2008 The GtkSourceView Team, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- GtkSpell 2, copyright © 2002 Evan Martin, released under the GPLv2;
- LibXML2, copyright © 1998–2003 Daniel Veillard. All rights reserved. Released under an MIT License;
- GtkHTML 3, copyright © 1998–2006 various copyright holders. The portions of the GtkHTML library used by this software are released under the LGPLv2.1;
- DBus-GLib, copyright © 2002, 2003 CodeFactory AB, and copyright © 2003, 2004 RedHat, Inc., released under a choice of licenses. The Academic Free License, version 2.1 covers this case;
- The e2fsprogs UUID library, copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Theodore T'so, released under its own BSD-style license;
- or, if the preceding library is not installed on your system, the OSSP UUID library, copyright © 2004–2008 Ralf S. Engelschall and copyright © 2004–2008 The OSSP Project, released under these terms.

The Gargoyle Glk library uses its own software libraries. In addition to the GDK and GTK+ libraries, mentioned above, it also links to the following:

- FreeType 2, copyright © 2008 The FreeType Project (www.freetype.org). All rights reserved. Released under the FreeType Project License;
- LibPNG, copyright © 2004, 2006–2008 Glenn Randers-Pehrson, released under these terms;
- LibJPEG, copyright © 1991–1998 Thomas G. Lane, released under these terms, which require stating here that this software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group;
- The Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), copyright © 1997–2006 Sam Lantinga, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- SDL_sound, copyright © Ryan C. Gordon, released under the LGPLv2.1;
- SDL_mixer, copyright © 1997–2004 Sam Lantinga, released under the LGPLv2.1.

A note on copyrights: although software libraries always include licenses, they do not always have a prominently displayed copyright notice. However, most free software libraries' licenses require users to reproduce the copyright notice in any software that links to the library — presumably, they want to reject users who are not sufficiently motivated to dig up the copyright notice. I have made every effort to reproduce the correct copyright notices of all the libraries used in this software, looking first in the library's documentation, and failing that, on the library's website. From that point on, things start to get a little iffy. Debian Linux is meticulous about including copyright notices in all their packages, so that is a good place to look, but I have found that they are not always up to date. Sometimes, different copyright notices are available from one or more sources. In that case, I have picked the one with the most recent year. If you are the copyright holder of any of this software and I have misrepresented your copyright, I will be happy to correct it, on the condition that you display your copyright notice more prominently.