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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.
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I want the license be general permissive, but:
You can embed my software in your software, but the source code of my part must be distributed with your product, and keep the license of my part unchanged.
You can change and rename my software, but the history part of the change log must be preserved.
You can using my software in your web service, but there must be a source code download link (of my part) somewhere obvious to see in the web page.
Well, there maybe not an exactly equivalent license, but which license seems most fit do you think?
I don't think a generally used license with all these conditions exists.
Sounds like you want elements of both:
The LGPL - which satisfies 1 and generally has the "my part must be open" philosophy
The Affero GPL, which requires sharing code if the software is used over a network (your point 3)
My advice however would be to select a commonly used license that is closest to what you want. Go to http://opensource.org/licenses/category and check out the "Licenses that are popular and widely used or with strong communities"
I'd guess LGPL would be the best fit (it doesn't satisfy your web-service requirements, but that's an uncommon requirement and hard to enforce anyway). LGPL is an excellent choice for libraries where you want the code of the library itself to stay open but don't mind the library being used in a generally permissive way.
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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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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 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
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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.