Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
in Educational Community License, Version 2.0, what is the meaning of the following: "Any patent license granted hereby with respect to contributions by an individual employed by an institution or organization is limited to patent claims where the individual that is the author of the Work is also the inventor of the patent claims licensed, and where the organization or institution has the right to grant such license under applicable grant and research funding agreements. No other express or implied licenses are granted"
looks to be pretty clear...
You cannot patent the work others contributed to the project.
You can patent your own work so long as the organization approves it.
The organization can only approve it if whoever is paying the bills allows it.
No other licenses are allowed, and the license cannot be changed.
~
my disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.
Related
Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 11 years ago.
Improve this question
This is a purely hypothetical question, but current copyright in the U.S. is life + 70 (I think).
Some open source licences require derivative works to also be open source.
My question is, are programmers no longer required to open source the derivative code if the license expires?
How about in other countries where the copyright term may be shorter?
Copyright, in theory, expires. At that time the work, if not renewed or updated, would fall into the public domain.
However:
The Mickey Mouse copyright extensions means that every time a key work would enter the public domain, copyright terms are extended.
Software from as little as 10 years ago in general is not relevant - things move to fast.
I am not a lawyer (IANAL) but my understanding is that copyright is completely unrelated to open source licensing. Under US law, the author of a literary or other creative work automatically has copyright protection of their work. No declarations or registrations are required. That copyright may expire some period of time after the author of the work is deceased. I'm not clear on the details, and the fact that the "Micky Mouse" copyright extensions keep changing that limit doesn't help clarity.
Open source licensing is not a right, it is a license that specifies the terms and conditions under which the source code may be used. The author decides what license terms to release the source code under, and the licensees (consumers of that source code) are held to that license. If the author's code is based upon a prior work, the author's license term options may be restricted by the license of the prior work.
I'm not aware of any expiration date associated with licenses. They are essentially contracts, so unless the contract/license explicitly states an expiration scenario, the license terms are in force forever.
Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
guys, could you please explain what are restrictions for commercial redistribution for these licenses (Apache , BSD , GNU GPL , GNU LGPL , MIT , MPL).
best regards.
In short - the Open licenses (Apache, BSD, MIT) allow just about any type of use, commercial or not, with virtually no strings attached (or control for you over your potential competitors or people who want to 'cheat'), whereas the Free Licenses (GPL, LGPL, etc) generally require you to always provide some rights to the source code to whomever you distribute your release to and this license limits your commercial options.
However above is a gross simplification - and this is far too big a question to be answered here - and to a some extend depends on the country you live in and the countries you do business with.
One of the most authoritative works is http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm - Lawrence Rosen's book Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law (ISBN 0-13-148787-6). You are after Chapter 10 - http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch10.pdf -- choosing an open source license. If that is too heavy http://4cff.org/default/index.cfm?LinkServID=C502415F-0288-0063-B060110EE1599F24&showMeta=0 and http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license-any-license.html are much shorter and easier to digest - but are not quite as thourough.
Another good source of information is http://www.opensource.org/.
Thanks,
Dw.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
Does anybody knows if I can use (opens source) software components/controls, which are under the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL), in commercial projects ?
Can anybody provide me a good and above all clear site with a overview of all open source licences and their restrictions ?
The FSF's License List is one of the more comprehensive, and legally pedantic (in this case a good thing).
That list identifies the Ms-RL as a free-software copyleft license incompatible with the GPL.
If that description isn't enough to answer your question, then either the question is too broad for this sort of forum and will need find a more license oriented forum; or, the question is too specific to your situation (ie. you are probably attempting to loophole the license), and you will need to talk to a lawyer.
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I am new to the world of open source so please answer accordingly!
I have seen many licenses in use, like GPL, MIT, Apache license. Of course I don't want to be a lawyer, but having at least a basic knowledge of all these would be helpful.
So where do I start? Do I simply read up these licenses? Or is there a book/ website out there that explains all this?
While it's probably not going to help much, I recently had a look at the page Open Source Licenses by Category over at www.opensource.org. Take a look at the category "License that are popular and widely used or with strong communities". I think that would be a good starting point.
While you'd probably have to be a lawyer to really understand and know all implications of every license, you can grasp the main differences by looking at them. Not all license texts are as long as that of GNU's GPL, so don't be afraid to look at them. (The MIT license is a good example. You can read it in about 1 minute's time.)
(The GNU GPL, btw., is considered by some to be the most restrictive open-source license, when it comes to using software in a commercial product. I think that was the initial reason why they came up with the GNU LGPL.)
Some more pointers to other questions here on Stack Overflow:
Corporate-Friendly Open Source Licenses (asked Aug 26 2008) -- mentions the Apache license
Which license should I use for my open source project (asked May 20 2010) -- mentions the GNU LGPL
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm currently looking at Prestashop, that uses an OSL 3.0 open source license. That license requires you to share the code even with users (so it plugs the famous "asp hole").
My question regards to it's plugin architecture for modules. Would the OSL 3.0 license apply also to modules, or it wouldn't be considered part of the distribution.
I've already read the license and searched for an explicit answer, but I haven't found it yet. Any insights?
Thanks,
Modules that are included in the main Prestashop distribution are subject to the same license, however any third-party modules or modules developed by Prestashop but not released in the main distribution can be subject to different license terms.
Each module can be written by a different developer/company and is subject to their own license terms. Modules can be free or commercial. Modules can be released under an Open Sourcee License (not necessarily OSL 3.0) or a bespoke license, a commercial license (could be perpetual or annual etc) or I've even seen case with no license details specified.
Also, modules do not have to be acquired from or purchased through the official marketplace they have developed (where Prestashop take a cut of the profits). They can be acquired direct from the software vendors, and installed easily by uploading a zip file.