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I have developed a PHP library which is a wrapper to our API.
Patents: The services rendered through the API are covered by patents and anyone using the library may be charged subject to usage crossing certain limits. The license must not grant anyone using the library any patent license.
How Free? Although the library is free, can be copied and distributed unmodified under the same name as much as it can be, usage will be charged depending on limits. In the event of non-payment, the services facilitated by the library will be disrupted.
Modifications & Redistribution: Although anyone is free to review, debug & modify the library, it is desired that modifications to the library are not released under the same name or seek to represent the original and intended library released by us.
Included libraries: The library we are providing uses PHPSecLib & SSS(Shamir's Secret Sharing) library by Kenny Millington. PHPSecLib is released under the MIT license & SSS is under GPLv3 or later.
In view of all this, which license should I choose?
Patents:
How Free?
A lot of API libraries are like that. The library is free but the service the API is utilizing isn't. See, for example, Google AdWords API PHP Client. It's Apache licensed which, in turn, is GPL compatible.
Modifications & Redistribution:
That's a problem. The PHP License has a similar restriction and as such it isn't GPL compatible. Of course if you don't care about GPL compatibility...
Included libraries:
The MIT license is pretty liberal and let's you do pretty much anything. GPLv3, however, is not. If you use GPLv3 code your license is going to need to be GPL compatible and with the restrictions you're wanting to impose it sounds like it's not going to be. My recommendation: maybe rewrite SSS? Compared to phpseclib it looks like an extremely small codebase.
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I want to release a software project, essentially a web site, and put it up on GitHub. I used several open source libraries (PHP) to create this web site. How do I provide proper attribution to the other libraries?
My goal is to invite other developers to contribute to the project, alter the code for their own use, run the altered web site from their own domain, and ideally improve the value and functionality for all. I do not want other developers to ever sell the code, nor sell their version of the code. What license do I use for my project?
I think you need to do the following:
upload your source code to an online public repository and add a
license.txt file in your source that contains the license
information.
You can additional disclaimers/credit on your web site for the third-party scripts used within your source.
Regarding the license to select, I think it varies depending on the third-party script licenses..
For instance:
If the third-party script you use is released under GPL license, then you also have to release it under GPL, but I am not saying all licenses require this. Its just what a GPL license requires.
GPL is the most common license to be found.
But you might wanna take a look at Creative Commons Licenses too.
EDIT:- I just found some thing that may help you choose your License see below link:
http://creativecommons.org/choose/
EDIT #2:- According to my research, and Creative Commons. CC licenses are NOT recommended for Softwares.
Helpful Links
http://opensource.org/faq
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html
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My company is offering a SaaS solution which is accessible via a web browser. We are using external libraries/frameworks like jQuery or the Zend framework in our solution. Do we have to make the different licenses from this libraries/frameworks accessible to our customers, for legal reasons? Do we have to mention the external libraries/frameworks on a credits page, or is it legal just to provide our service without giving credits to other libraries/frameworks?
Can we still provide our service under our proprietary license (don't know if it makes sense)?
Or software is not downloadable, but we are shipping whole appliances or virtualmachines with our solution.
Each license will have its own requirements, but most permissive licenses (such as the MIT and Apache licenses) don't require you to specifically mention them or their license to your application users. Instead they require that you maintain distribute the license and copyright information if you distribute the source code. In addition, the Apache license in particular requires that you provide a notice in any source file that has been modified stating such.
I have seen library licenses (see the second requirement), however, which specifically require attribution within a linking application.
I am not a lawyer, and you should consult with a lawyer if you have doubts concerning licensing.
Often frameworks have this kind of information on their website. If not, check the wording of the license itself and its website. Different licenses have different requirements. Copies of the GPL and LGPL, for example, should be distributed with the source code they cover.
As for providing your product under a proprietary license, again, it depends on the license. If you were to make use of a 3rd party library as a part of your product, and that library was covered by the GPL, your product must also be distributed under the GPL. However, if it was covered by the LGPL you would not have that restriction and you could license your product how you please.
Look here for jQuery: http://jquery.org/license/. I think you will want the MIT license (although I am not familiar with the details, I think it will suit you better than the GPL).
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Let's say that I want to develop an app using .Net and Microsoft UccApi. I'd like to make it open source. Am I eligable to do it? What type of open source license must I use? What limitations must I keep in mind?
Open source licenses impose constraints on the way in which a given software can be distributed. The fact that you are using a Microsoft based product to develop your software does not pose any particular restriction on the distribution of software that you are developing. You are free to do as you want. To choose an appropriate license you must consider the restrictions that are associated to each specific license and choose whatever option is best for you. I'll give a few rough examples just to give an overview:
Do you want just to be recognized for developing the software and you do not expect anything else? It is fine if someone takes your software, modifies it without distributing the improvements and the sells it as a commercial software? Then evaluate BSD or MIT or Apache licenses.
Are you fine if someone embeds your software as a statically linked library, even in a commercial project, but you would like all improvements to your original software to be distributed back to you? Then evaluate a LGPL license.
You want to "contribute to the community" and you would like that evey work derived from your software should be a "community contribution too". In this case choose a GPL. Every software derived from yours must be open sourced as well. Note that this does not prevent someone from selling the derived software when he publishes the source code.
If you don't want in any case that your software could be part of a commercial product then you must explicitly disallow it in your license.
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I'm pretty much looking for something similar to the creative commons cc-by-sa license, but they don't recommend to use it for code. Is there something that includes attribution? The popular ones (GPL, APL, EPL, BSD, MIT, ...) don't.
The answer mostly depends on what kind of attribution you want. All popular licenses require copyright notices to be preserved, which means in practice that the author is acknowledged in the source code. If you want something like old BSD advertisement clause but with share-alike, I am not familiar with a license like that. Share-alike (also called copyleft) guarantees access to the source code, so attributions made there are more effective than in BSD-style licenses, where binary-only derivatives are permitted.
Modifying the GPL should follow the recommendation of the FSF, otherwise several distributors, including Debian, would consider your work undistributable. Supplementing the GPL with additional permissions is not subject to this rule.
The Apache license allows you to include a NOTICE file that all derivative works must include (but it's not copyleft, like the cc-by-sa). That could serve as your attribution.
If you want the derivative works to be distributed under the same license as the original, you can always modify your favorite copyleft license (GPL for most people) to require attribution, or just write your own license from scratch (look at the MIT or BSD licenses--they're both only a few paragraphs, and they get the job done).
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I would like to publish my application, which is AGPL. It can be downloaded from my website. But the archive also contains other libraries with different licenses:
XStream (BSD)
GWT (Apache2)
gwt-dnd (Apache2)
gwt-upload (Apache2)
Commons Fileupload (Apache2)
JDOM (Apache-style)
iText (AGPL)
JFreeChart (LGPL)
JavaMail (JavaMail)
I didn't change any of these libraries, I just use them. What do I have to do?
Do I have to mention the used libraries on my website or in the COPYING file in my application archive?
Do I have to mention the authors?
Do I have to mention all the licenses?
Do I have to provide all the licenses somehow to my users?
Since answering to my question could be legal advice and therefore problematic, is there a project online which looks similar to mine? Perhaps there is an "anonymous" answer to my question?
People answering legal or licensing questions are not trying to be evasive. But it's hard to answer licensing questions in a way that can be as accurate as the terms spelled out in the license itself. Trying to interpret legal text can expose one to liability if one gets it even slightly wrong (even non-lawyers can be held liable).
Many questions about GPL are answered in plain English here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
The Apache License 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) covers terms of redistribution. See for example section 4, paragraph 4.
The New BSD License covers terms of redistribution (for both source and binaries) in the second paragaph. That license in particular is quite short, and easy to read.
Do not make business decisions without consulting with a legal professional.
You will have to provide it for all those libraries that require it as per their respective licensing requirements.
You have to read the licenses, and act accordingly.