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Just some general and specific questions about running a business which uses open source software and sells training, services, and other value added solutions utilizing the Open Source asset(s) (software,framework,suite,solution).
How much modification do you need to make to an existing open source software/framework to create your own brand? Open Source (GPLv3) branding issues here....copyright and trademark issues as well..... for ex) Mambo and Joomla, I think they are pretty much same? But they have different labels.
More specifically my concern is, how to avoid trademark/copyright infringement while promoting the open source asset? Is it best to simply relabel the open source asset with my own?
Is there a disadvantage of promoting open source software/framework/suite in hopes of selling value added services and solutions on top of the Open Source asset?
Can Open Source assets be marketing point for lowered Total Ownership Cost and transparency? Meaning, clients will not be using some mysterious, opaque proprietary asset?
Is competition fierce? Cost of developing software is non existing because you are using an open source asset. Barrier to entry is minimal?
I think this question would be more relevant to be posted on answers.onstartups.com and you would most likely get better responses as most of the members are entrepreneurs.
There has been a discussion there about this.
You don't want to create your own brand; you want to profit from the existing brand's popularitly. Focus on a single system or a related range of systems and promote yourself in that area:
start a blog
visist conferences
participate on sites (i.e. StackOverflow)
contribute to the project itself. Code, documentation, design.
In general, be a good Open Source citizen. You will need your open source network for your references.
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This is not something I want to do myself, but it's a question/problem I can't get out of my head.
If you distribute open source-program/classes/libraries, how can you make sure the user has purchased a license? Would it not be very easy for programmers to just remove the license-part of the product and distribute it or use a pirate-version?
Take Invision Power Board for instance. It is written in PHP (i.e completely open and editable) and you have to buy a license to be able to use it. How can they make this limit? Do they authenticate the forum towards their servers? If they do, would it not be easy to simply remove this function?
Another example that I have even more problem understanding is HighCharts, a JS library to draw graphs. They offer a free version with their name on each graph. If you purchase the product, the label is gone. How do they do this?
I know this question is a bit wide and open, but I am just asking for a way to prevent people from simply editing out the license/blockade? What is the essence in this?
There are no license purchases for true "open source" libraries or programs, because the essence of open source is that the code is free and you can build/deploy it yourself at will.
What you're talking about is commercial software that might use a codebase that is easily visible/editable. It's not marketed as "open source," but the source code is easily accessible and potentially easily modified.
There are various mechanisms for obfuscating or hiding the content of the code that some products would choose to use, which make modifying the code more difficult. For example, there are various ways of pre-compiling PHP code rather than distributing the raw files (see this question for examples).
However, the biggest thing that you lose out on with most software of this sort is support. If you're a serious user of a complex piece of software, especially a business user, you would typically want to know that you have a commercial support plan in place for any critical software. The kind of user that would crack/pirate such software (that is, individuals or small companies) aren't likely to be as significant to the vendor.
On the internet there's a further obvious avenue: if a significant public site were using Invision Power Board, they would soon notice and could demand suitable license (or take legal action).
Ultimately, this kind of abuse is very difficult to prevent if someone is determined enough: you are very much at the whim of your users.
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I have an applicaion, that can best be described 'loosly' as a scripting application, primarly designed for part time developers, engineers and sciences types with a VB.NET background (can theoretically do C#).
This has been a long three year hobby and I am about 95% complete. I am planning to make the applicaiton freely available for most (if not all) uses, but I do not want to open source it (at least right now).
I was looking for an online place to post and collaborate with some folks for feedback, to get some testing done and finalize the application (my wife wants me to be DONE with it). My searches online have revealed many spaces, but all seem to be open-source spaces that require release of the source code, or just aplace to post 'free' completed software. I am looking for the collaboration part.
Can anyone point me to a such a space that does not require providing the open source code (if it even exits)?
I think you can use most of the collaboration places without actually uploading any source to the repository.
I've seen a bunch of project on Google Code Hosting that have no source (usually its then on GitHub) and just use the Google Hosting for bug-tracking and collaboration.
I created a BitBucket account. Looks like it might work. Many of the sites require you to choose an open source license before you even create a space. BitBucket does not.
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I'm working on a web based ladder system for a game. It is very game specific and I want to make the project open source so the community can give back, contribute and make the experience better for everyone. However at the same time I don't want people to re-use the code/implement the code on separate sites because the purpose of the website/project is to unify the community under one roof. So my question is: what is the best license to use to make that possible?
... I don't want people to re-use the code/implement the code on separate sites ...
This really misses the point of Free Software, or as the FSF puts it, it's open source but not really Free Software. Despite my tone, I'm not here to lecture you, I'm simply pointing out that people are not likely to help if the project has this kind of restriction.
However, if you change that to:
... I don't want people to re-use the code/implement the code on separate sites without contributing any modifications they make back to the project ...
Then the GNU Affero General Public License might be appropriate; it prevents people from modifying your website unless they publish their changes under the same license.
If you still insist on your original restriction, then no open source license will help you, since most of them are about being Free Software, not just open source. You're going to have to write your own license, or modify an existing one.
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We develop scientific software and I manage a small group of applied scientists who write great code. A lot of our products depend on stable development tools which we've been using for developing a stable code base. Now the issue is, someone from the management visited an open source conference and was too pleased to see a lot of great tools which can be used internally for free in place of the commercial ones we've been using so far. So he suggested to the management to remove costs of buying the tools we've using and shift to the open source ones. Now I do not have anything against the open source movement but through a small experiment I found that my team is spending a lot more time debugging and maintaining stable code bases for those open source tools .
I'm sure a lot of other program manager's have had this problem so far. Would people relate their experiences and let me know of any studies made on this subject ? i want to present a cost benefit analysis to the management by giving some statistical facts not just empirical evidence. I'll be glad to know some case studies thereof.
I think open source is terrific, but I use a commercial IDE (IntelliJ) for Java development, even though there are popular open source alternates Eclipse and NetBeans. In my experience, IntelliJ is the best IDE, hands down, with a measurable impact on my productivity.
I can't say that it's true of all tools, but in this case it is.
I don't believe that either open source or commercial tools can claim the high ground here, because I can cite good and bad examples on both sides. Blanket statements and "me, too" thinking are usually a bad idea.
Statistics will be hard to come by. 86% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
I would expect managers in a company whose products are based on science to be more rational. You're a small firm - talk it through. If it's not possible in your situation, then no one has a chance.
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Let's say I have an open project called Some Project. Would you recommend hosting the project site under someproject.com or someproject.org, and why? I realize that .org suits an open source project better, but I'm afraid that on longer term, I may want to (cough...) start making money out of it, and .org would become misleading, while moving to .com could cause troubles in the sense of SEO and promotion. I hope someone could shed some light on this dilemma.
The definition of .org (from various sources) is "top-level Internet domain used by associations and non-profit organizations mostly in the U.S. and Canada." So, this could become misleading (not that people don't do it). I would follow the lead of WordPress, where .org is the Open Source project and .com is the commercial entity.
Register both, use the .org for the open project, save the .com for if/when you need it.
Register both. Use .org as the main domain, .com is supposed to be for commercial ventures but you wouldn't want it to be taken by a domain squatter.
Depends what the project is. For example, .fm is often used for music sites.
Either way, if your project rocks, it doesn't matter.