Celestia Forums

Hi,

I'm making a 3d game like the one from David Braven, Frontier (or Elite), and I would like to use the star files stars.dat and starnames.dat from Celestia to use in my program. The game will be based in Java and will be open source, so I suppose there will be no obstacles to use the files, but I want to ensure this. Of course I will acknowledge this fact in the program when it is released.

Note also that i will import the data to a binary format of my own so probably the original files won't be needed in the distribution of the game.

Thanks in advance

Juan Jose Luna

juanjoluna,

Don't forget that Celestia and its files are covered by the Gnu Public License V2. If you do redistribute the files, then your software will need to comply with the terms of the Gnu license.

Celestia's stars.dat is derived from the Hipparcos catalog, so you'll need to credit ESA, too.
You might want to consider using the original Hipparcos data as provided by ESA.
http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?proje ... e=Overview

I was going to use the GNU license V3 for my game. I've read the V2, and it says:

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of
this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software
Foundation.

So it's okay to use version 3

Of course i'll credit Celestia and ESA for the files.

The Hipparcos catalog is divided into some files, it's easier to take the one from Celestia, but i'll take a look anyways

Thanks