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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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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.
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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.
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Does anyone know of a reference that explains the different open-source licenses in easily understandable, non-legalese terms?
Specifically I'm looking for information about what it means to me when I'd like to use and redistribute some (open-source) library with my own products, e.g. something like this:
a library distributed under license X
can be modified, used and redistributed without restrictions, even in commercial, closed-source products
a library distributed under license Y
may not be modified, but can be redistributed with a commercial, closed-source products
it is required to mention the fact that a product makes use of that library (e.g. by adding some license file, etc)
a library distributed under license Z
may only be used by projects which are also distributed under the same license
This is going to be a big grave dig, but after reading this question I can't help but to slip this link here:
http://www.tldrlegal.com
^Lookup any software license summarized in plain english (What you can, cannot and must do).
There's a list there, with a FAQ: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/
In your case, I think that X=public domain, Y=some commercial licenses, Z=GPL
(modified BSD is similar to Y, but you are allowed to modify them).
The licenses themselves are fairly readable.
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My company (EU-based) is considering to release some parts of our code
under a free software license. We are going to ask lawyers, but firstly
I'd like to ask what problems should we expect when doing that? We are
planning to use LGPL license, mostly because we want to be able to reuse
other people's code in our (closed) software later too.
Edit: We own all the code we want to be released (everything was written
by a single developer, and he actually proposed to opensource the code).
Also we don't care about reusing
this code by our competitors; this piece of code is more or less orthogonal
to what we do for living. We do expect that this code will be improved by others (or at
least spot any bugs), but it is actually good enough for us already.
Thanks for opinions.
Possible problems:
You do not own the rights on all of your own code (e.g. some portion was made by a freelancer but the rights were never properly transfered)
You expect something to happen with your code (e.g. other people to improve it) but it never happens
Your code becomes used in a competing product and you cannot prevent that
You want to withdraw the freedom and find out you can't
If your company wants to keep some control of what is the official code, I suggest you the Artistic License 2.0, instead of LGPL.
I would recommended releasing under LGPL or BSD style license, which does not contain any responsibilities from your side.
Regarding the use of code by other people, again, use only BDS licensed code and you are all set.
If you use the LGPL, contributions from other people can still be done under the GPL, which would prevent you from reusing their code in close-source software. You'll have to watch out for that. Also, even if their contribution is LGPLed, you only have the freedom to not open the source if that code is used in an external DLL or the like.
This is a very rough description, and the implications of that are quite hard to grasp (I don't fully either) and also depend on what kind of software you're developing, so you definitively have to consult a lawyer.
You might also want to look at what Qt does.
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Years ago I released a program called Banshee Screamer Alarm and at the time it included the full source code, "for educational purposes only." You couldn't extend it to make your own version, but you could learn from it. It actually helped somebody fix a bug in wine.
If I release more software like this (open source, but copyrighted and non-free), are there any legal thorns that I should know about? Are there any suitable licenses for this purpose?
I don't see any problems, but then I'm not a lawyer and have no real interest in proprietary software licenses. You should be able to just ship source without trouble, much like the old days of interpreted BASIC. There were plenty of proprietary programs distributed that way.
However, quite a few people would appreciate it if you'd call it "source included" or something like that rather than "open source". The Open Source Initiative has a clear meaning for "open source", and you aren't coming anywhere near their definition.
Adding the source for educational purposes only sounds good to me. Microsoft did similar with their Shared Source initiative.
You might want to avoid the open source moniker though, if you don't use an OSI approved license.