Licence

The terms Stage is published under

This page is here to be read before you download anything. A copy of these terms is published with every release, and it is that copy which governs the release it came with.

Stage is free to use, and it remains its developers' own. These terms say what you may do with it, in the plainest language that will still mean something.

In these terms, Stage means the Stage engine: the program, its source code, and anything published as part of a Stage release. Stage's developers means whoever holds copyright in it, named above. You means whoever is using it, and any organisation you are using it on behalf of. Where these terms say author, they mean the writer of a game, who is a different person with different rights - see Your games, below.

Accepting these terms

Using Stage means agreeing to these terms. If you do not agree to them, do not use it.

What you may do

Use Stage for anything. Personal or commercial, at home or at work, alone or in a company of any size. There is no fee and there is nothing to ask for. Write games with it, build them, play them, serve them, and teach other people to do the same.

Sell what you make. A game you write with Stage is yours to give away or sell on whatever terms you choose. See Your games, below.

Pass Stage on unchanged. You may copy Stage and give it to other people - including alongside a game you have made, so a player can run it without going and fetching the engine first - as long as:

it is exactly as you received it, with nothing added, removed or altered;
these terms travel with it, along with the third-party notices published beside them; and
you do not charge for Stage itself.

Selling a game that includes a copy of Stage is fine. Selling Stage, charging for access to it, or presenting any part of a price as being for Stage, is not.

What you may not do

Change Stage, or publish anything based on it. You may not modify it, translate it, adapt it, build on it, or distribute anything derived from it. If Stage does not do what you need, ask its developers for it rather than forking it.

Pass it off as yours. You may not claim authorship of Stage, remove or obscure its copyright notices, or use the name Stage for a different program, or in a way that suggests Stage's developers made or endorsed something they did not.

Sub-license it. These terms do not let you grant anyone else rights to Stage. Everyone who receives it receives it from Stage's developers, on these terms.

Your games

Stage claims nothing of what you make with it.

The game files you write are yours. The compiled game a build produces from them is yours. These terms place no condition of any kind on either: no fee, no share, no attribution, no restriction on how you license them, and no obligation to tell anyone they exist. You may sell your game, give it away, keep it private, or publish it under any terms you like, including terms quite unlike these.

The format is not the engine

The engine is not free. The shape of the files it reads and writes is.

Anyone may write software that reads or writes Stage's formats - the YAML a game is authored in, and the .stg file a build produces from it - for any purpose, commercial or not, without permission and without a fee. Doing that is not making a work based on Stage, and nothing in these terms reaches it. Stage's documentation may be used to work out how.

What this does not permit is copying Stage's own code to do it. Implement the format; don't take the program.

This is here so that a game outlives the engine that built it. If Stage stops being maintained, or its developers stop being reachable, the games people wrote are not lost with it: anyone holding a .stg file and this permission has everything they need to build something that plays it.

What is inside a build

Stage's published builds are compiled with Deno, and Deno embeds the engine's source code inside the executable it produces. That is a fact about how the program is built, not an oversight, and it means you can read Stage's source by looking at a build.

You are welcome to read it. Reading is not permission to modify or to publish a modified version, and the section above still governs both.

Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under law that cannot be limited by agreement.

Other people's code

A Stage build contains the Deno runtime and parts of the Deno standard library, which are MIT-licensed and belong to their own authors. Their terms are reproduced in the third-party notices, and those terms - not these - govern that code.

No warranty

Stage is provided as it is, without warranty or condition of any kind, as far as the law allows. It may contain faults. It may lose your work. Keep backups of anything you would mind losing.

No liability

As far as the law allows, Stage's developers are not liable to you for any damages arising out of these terms, or out of the use or the nature of Stage, under any kind of legal claim.

Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

If these terms are broken

The first time you are told in writing that you have broken these terms, your rights under them continue if you come fully back into compliance, and take practical steps to correct what has already happened, within 32 days of being told. Otherwise your rights under these terms end immediately.

What has been given is not taken back

The terms a release was published under stay with that release. Later versions of Stage may be published on whatever terms its developers choose, including more generous ones - but nothing already published under these terms is brought under narrower ones afterwards.

This matters most for the section above about the format. A promise that a game outlives its engine would be worth little if it could be withdrawn the year after you relied on it.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and the courts of Scotland have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

Getting different terms

These terms are deliberately narrow in one direction only: Stage itself stays its developers'. If you want to do something they do not allow - modify the engine, build a product on top of it, distribute a changed version - ask. The answer is not automatically no.