this thread is like the poster child for "why people are scared to fiddle with libre software"

when people explain it as "free as in free speech, not free beer" you look at that it's like cool i get it. then you actually start reading the licenses (atleast the "strong copyleft" ones like gpl) and it is overwhelming and quite frankly doesn't feel free at all. it is about limiting me, but limiting me to ensure that others are free to have the same limitations that i have.

i love the concept of libre software and open content. i really do. but when you get into the muck with it, it's so confusing and requires one to invest significant time in understanding legalese that could be spent actually making some shit. that's why i decided all my art would be cc0 cuz it's the easiest to understand and most useful for the end user, and all my code would be expat/mit cuz it's the easiest to understand and most useful for the end user. the tradeoff is that what i put out there is as free as can be, but the license does not ensure that it stays free. i am ok with that.

of course nothing i just said helps anyone understand how to properly distribute gpl flare game engine and proprietary flare assets. sorry to derail the information train, just thought i would butt in with some totally not useful sidebar discussion. 

EDIT:

@WithinAmnesia if you had an informal discussion with Clint Bellanger and he said "go ahead and do that" I don't think that is quite the same as having him "alt-license" his code to you under a proprietary license. But as bzt said, yes the originator of any work is free to license that work in whatever way they choose. So if Clint Bellanger created the Flare code, he owns the Flare code that he made. He distributed under gpl, so the code that was distributed under gpl. My understanding is that he can still take his code and "alt-license" it to others under proprietary license (or sell ownership entirely as bzt alluded to earlier.) But I don't think he would have the right to take the gpl'ed code that has been modified by Flare community and re license it. But i honestly know nothing about flare or it's dev history, and who actually wrote the code or any of that stuff.

My point is that you might wanna have a more thorough discussion with Clint Bellanger as to what he meant, and what rights have you been granted. I don't think quoting what appears to be an informal half paragraph from a private email is enough to justify that you have "non-gpl" rights to use his gpl code.

oh and https://snyk.io/learn/open-source-licenses/ is another nice link for foss licenses that are out there.

that's just my two cents, minus inflation.