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[dontkickpenguins]

How would you go about open sourcing a game? Under what licence should you do it? Do you have to use different licences for the code as opposed to the art? Is this all a moot point as a small indie would probably not be able to enforce owt anyway?

[tapir]

GPL is the most common if you really want to contribute to the open source community as it enforces that derivative works should be open source too.
If you don't care about people doing closed source games with your code then BSD or MIT type licenses are very popular. You can also use LGPL which lets people use your code as shared/dynamic library without open sourcing their code, no static linking is allowed unless their code is open source too.

Free Software Foundation recommends using Creative Commons licenses for the assets (sounds, images etc...) as L/GPL is too code oriented.

If you want to keep selling your game you can also not release your assets as public domain. (such as Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru or Penumbra) This way, you still contribute code to the community but people willing to play the original game will have to pay for it.

You won't probably be able to enforce anything by yourself but FSF (Groklaw too maybe?) provides services to assist people with L/GPL violations.

Your firends:
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.groklaw.net/

[mcc]

I find most open source game library code seems to come under the X11 or BSD licenses. I think these probably are the most appropriate licenses for the specific circumstances around game programming, and when I release code I do so as X11. Because most people making a game probably want to at least have the option of selling it someday, and selling GPLed products is tricky, I think if you straight up GPLed it would make the code less useful to many people and maybe discourage its adoption. LGPL would not tend to have this problem as much, though in practice the LGPL can be tricky to follow, especially for something like a game.

The real benefit of GPL code is that it encourages large ongoing collaborative development efforts. These do not tend to develop around games anyway. Because games tend to be unique artistic works, it is more likely someone will borrow a few routines piecemeal from your open source code rather than just modify your game and rerelease it. For this reason I think it is good to put as few restrictions on the behavior of the users of your code as possible, because you don't know what it is they will be doing with it. (I think GPLing a game might be a good way to encourage ports of it, however.)

I do not think you should worry about whether you'll be able to enforce open source licenses. The history on enforcing OSS license compliance is good and there may be nonprofits that will aid you legally if you cannot afford to go after a license violator yourself. The worry in this scenario is probably figuring out you've been ripped off in the first place more so than being able to do something about it once you work it out.

[lansing]

You won't probably be able to enforce anything by yourself but FSF (Groklaw too maybe?) provides services to assist people with L/GPL violations.

Your firends:
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.groklaw.net/

The FSF only assists with violations when you have assigned copyright to them.  It is the responsibility of the copyright holder (ie. you) to enforce copyright.

Personally I like BSD3.

[Skofo]

selling GPLed products is tricky

This is false. Whatever license your original software is under (if any) makes absolutely no difference in how you sell it.

The real benefit of GPL code is that it encourages large ongoing collaborative development efforts. These do not tend to develop around games anyway.

Battle for Wesnoth, Hedgewars, Indie Brawl?

And it is not even true that GPL code's benefit is "encouraging large ongoing collaborative effort". Many people use the GPL simply because they want anything based on their open source software to be open source as well.

[Rob Lach]

You could sell public domain software if you're able to pull it off.

[dontkickpenguins]

So to summarise there are a multitude of licences out there for this kind of thing and you should do your code and art separately.

For code the possible licences are:
GPL
LGPL
X11/MIT licence (two different names for the same licence)
BSD

For the artwork you should use the Creative Commons licence.

Also, it's possible (and probably a good idea to) to do the Indie Game Bundle thing where you only release the source for the engine but not the assets. Correct?

[Zaknafein]

I was about to ask "What about the MIT License" but then realized that MIT and X11 are two names for the same license. This is probably worth pointing out for license noobs like myself.

[tapir]

Also, it's possible (and probably a good idea to) to do the Indie Game Bundle thing where you only release the source for the engine but not the assets. Correct?

Is the game commercial? If so, not releasing the assets will help you sell games even after you release the code. But if it's a free game you might as well release the assets in CC. Also keep in mind that CC has several versions. You can tweak it to your liking. For example you can prohibit the commercial use of your assets.

For the code part it's easy. Ask your self the most important question.
Do I want people to be able to produce closed source games with my code?
No -> Use GPL
Yes -> Choose one of the others

[tapir]

You won't probably be able to enforce anything by yourself but FSF (Groklaw too maybe?) provides services to assist people with L/GPL violations.

Your firends:
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.groklaw.net/

The FSF only assists with violations when you have assigned copyright to them.  It is the responsibility of the copyright holder (ie. you) to enforce copyright.

Personally I like BSD3.

Quoting from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

Note that the GPL, and other copyleft licenses, are copyright licenses. This means that only the copyright holders are empowered to act against violations. The FSF acts on all GPL violations reported on FSF copyrighted code, and we offer assistance to any other copyright holder who wishes to do the same.

I didn't use it myself so I don't know what they offer, but as I said before, they assist people on violations.