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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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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'm looking to start a open source project with a friend and we were discussing open source licenses but neither of us really understand the vague and unclear terms and conditions of the licenses.
We are fine with:
Distribution
Creation of derivative works
But do not want:
Sale of our work
Sale of derivative works
Use of our work without attribution in any form
Can you guys recommend any Open Source licenses that fulfill those criteria?
It isn't possible to put this restriction on your code and still count as "open source", at least under the widely accepted open source definition.
The relevant paragraph:
Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate
software distribution containing programs from several different
sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such
sale.
i.e. if you want to count as open source, you have to allow others to sell your software either in its current form or as a derived / aggregate work.
If you want to be open source but still want a commercialisation option, one option is to release your software under a dual license, with one license being copyleft (like the GPLv3) and the other being a proprietary license. Others can then use your software under the terms of the GPL, but if they want to incorporate your software into a closed source software product they will need to buy your proprietary license.
Why not this one:
We are fine with:
•Distribution
•Creation of derivative works
But do not want:
•Sale of our work
•Sale of derivative works
•Use of our work without attribution in any form
Take a look at CC-BY-NC-SA, that is the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. (full Creative Commons Legal Code here) The Choose a license page too recommends the same with your requirements: No commercial uses, but with (attributed) modifications allowed.
Section 4.c. of this license specifically states:
You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.
(Section 3 deals with copying/adapting/distributing etc.)
No matter which license you choose, I strongly recommend going through the Creative Commons FAQ.
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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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If there is a javascript library that is licensed under a Copyleft license like the GPL, what must I do to use it? Would I have to make my whole website open source just because I used that javascript library?
It seems that this is still a matter of debate. The stance taken by the Free Software Foundation, which holds all of the GPL copyrights and enforces them, is that any code that links with GPL code, whether statically or dynamically, must also be under the GPL. So in this case, yes you would have to open source your project - but only if you were to distribute it at all. Nothing is forcing you to distribute your code.
So I would agree that you're ok with using it. Personally, I wouldn't use any GPL code in a website that sells anything as part of a for-profit company, even though it's probably legal too (it's likely considered the "output" of the code). The realm of free software licenses in regards to web code is still not completely clear, so I try to follow the spirit of the rules when I can.
I'm not a lawyer so take my advice with the grains kilotonne of salt it deserves. From the GPL:
To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other
parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through
a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
...
You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not
convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains
in force.
So I would take this to mean, no, only the used library has to stay under the GPL as per the license. The license stipulates it must be displayed and unchanged, that is all.