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There seems to be a lot of press regarding the announcement that Intellij is being made available for free as an open source tool. Yet from what I read of the licenses, that's only true if the end product is open source and free. If you plan on selling your end product, you can't use the free community version.
Have I misread something?
Only a subset of IntelliJ, the IntelliJ community edition has been released as open source software. The page that you linked to describes a special license of the "Ultimate" edition (which is not open source), that they are specifically giving for free to people who promise that they will only use it for writing open source software for non-commercial purposes.
According to the FAQ, the new open source version of IntelliJ is available under an Apache license.
To clarify:
The community edition of IntelliJ is available under the Apache license, which means you can use it for whatever purposes you want, including writing proprietary, commercial software. It also mean you can modify the code of IntelliJ yourself, sell modified versions of it, anything like that, as long as you abide by the Apache license.
The community edition does not have all of the functionality of the ultimate edition. It only has some of the functionality; for instance, it has support for Java and Groovy, but not Python or Scala. But the community edition can be used for any purposes you want, as long as you follow the terms of the Apache license.
The ultimate edition (which includes extra functionality as listed in their comparison) normally costs money. However, they are also offering the ultimate edition for free to people who promise that they are using it for non-commercial purposes for an open source project (I have no idea how they would actually enforce this, but that's beside the point). I believe this is an offer that they've had since before they released IntelliJ community edition as open source software; as a way of helping out open source development, without giving away everything to everyone.
So, go ahead and download the community edition, and use it for anything you want, from developing free software to developing commercial software to modifying IntelliJ yourself and selling it.
IntelliJ has a licenses folder that you can check out; For instance mine is located under here JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 129.111\license
You can see that there is a file called IDEA_OpenSource_license.txt
GRANT OF LICENSE
Subject to the terms, conditions, and limitations set forth in this
Agreement, including any amendments thereto, Licensor hereby grants to
Licensee a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable,royalty-free
license to use the Software for a period of 1 (one) year as follows:
(a) Licensee may: (i) install the version of the Software that has
been specified in License Certificate on multiple Clients and
operating systems; (ii) use the Software by Authorized Users solely
for the purpose of development of non-commercial open source projects
that meet the Open Source Definition at
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html, and (iii) make
one back-up copy of the Software solely for archival purposes.
(b) Licensee may not: (i) sell, redistribute (except as set forth in
Paragraph 5 herein), encumber, give, lend, rent, lease, sublicense, or
otherwise transfer the Software, or any portions of the Software, to
anyone without the prior written consent of Licensor; (ii) reverse
engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify, translate, make any attempt
to discover the source code of the Software, or create derivative
works from the Software, or (iii) use the Software for any commercial
purpose.
Which seems to completely go against what the Apache License allows you to do
I wonder if this is a relic of a previous License before it was open sourced?
Edit
Dmitry Jemerov has posted on the following on the Jetbrains blog [source]
IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition is completely free and open-source,
licensed under the Apache 2 license and can be used for any kind of
development. Android Studio has the same licensing terms.
You will find that the free version has most of the features of IntelliJ removed, so you can get experience with IntelliJ, but if you really want to do anything of complexity with it you will need to buy the full-featured version.
But, if you use the free version how can anyone tell which IDE you used to create the java source?
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I am starting to get a small (just me at the moment) web design company off the ground and there is one thing that is a bit fuzzy to me - whether I can legally use open source apps in sites that I built without paying.
Say, for example, that I want to incorporate CKEditor into a custom built CMS on site that I produce. Should I be paying a commercial license to do so?
I am a small startup at the moment and really do not have big bucks to go out buying OEM or commercial licenses. Where is the line between "personal" and commercial when it comes to design?
CKEditor can be used without paying a commercial license. The commercial license is available if GPL, LGPL, or MPL are not satisfactory. The text below is stating that, for companies that cannot use software under an Open Source license for whatever reason, they can still purchase a commercial license.
For many companies and products, Open Source licenses are not an option.
This is why the CKSource Closed Distribution License (CDL) has been introduced.
For your use, I would recommend either LGPL or MPL to be safe. The GPL requires all software linked to the GPL code to also be GPL (or a compatible license). This is why it is considered a "viral license" by many companies. The other licenses do not carry this requirement. The LGPL specifically removes it; that is why it is known as the "Library" or "Lesser" GPL.
As far as the line between commercial and non-commercial use, that depends on the software that you are integrating with. It is perfectly fine for someone to pay you to create a site - it does not mean that the resulting work itself is commercial. You are not integrating the editor in your web design services site, so that shouldn't be the criteria you use to decide. You would be integrating it in the site you have been hired to create. If this site itself provides or is a front for commercial products or services, then it's commercial. But again, you do not need to purchase the commercial license if your client is OK with the terms of LGPL or MPL (I don't see why they wouldn't).
CKEditor (previously FCKEditor) can be licensed under GPL, LGPL, MPL, and even a CKSource Closed Distribution License (CDL). GPL and LGPL (probably MPL as well) are distribution-based licenses. That is, they only apply when you're re-distributing the software. Although it's not clear from your question, my guess is you just want to 'use' CKEditor in a website design as opposed to incorporating it into website software that you're going to distribute and/or sell. In the use-in-website case, the ASP loophole probably applies to your scenario regardless of personal or commercial use and there's no need to pay for anything or apply any licenses on your website work.
If, however, you turn around and decide you want to try an distribute and/or sell your custom CMS that incorporates the CKEditor (for example, sell it to other website designers that need a CMS), then you must abide by the rules of whichever license you select and pay accordingly if you decide the CDL license is most appropriate for your needs. The CKEditor website has good examples of reasons why you would choose the CDL option.
Have you seen the http://ckeditor.com/license page ? It seems pretty clear it's free for non-commercial use, but you need a license for commercial use.
More generally, it depends on the license of the app in question. Open-source apps are typically free to use, but may place restrictions on redistribution. IF the license is MIT, BSD or Apache you can essentially do what you want providing you keep their copyright notice there. If the license is GPL, the requirement to redistribute your code under a copyleft license too is typically incompatible with commercial use.
You'll have to check the license of whatever you're using, but in general you can use open source stuff for anything as long as you don't claim it as your own.
Unfortunately it's not as simple as just the two licensing models, since open source licenses fall under several other categories. In some cases, you cannot release your code under a different license with an open source library linked to it (like the GPL). In other cases, you can make changes to the open source code and re-release it as closed source (like the Apache License). See this reference for free software licenses and which are okay to link or release with different licenses.
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I am planning to start a commercial web project (like e.g. facebook) which requires a database.
I've read through all the licenses and FAQ's of MySQL, PostgreSQL and HSQLDB but I am still not certain if I need to purchase a license (commercial type) or have to publish the source code of my web project (open source license) since I am not a lawyer.
My Question is: Can I use any of the databases mentioned above for my commercial project without having to purchase a commercial license or publish my source?
If not, is there a database out there which I could use?
You can use MySQL and PostgreSQL commercially without any sort of purchase. You can purchase support agreements from them, if you need it.
You would not be required to publish your source code simply because you're using an open source database. Only if your project was a modification of the database engine would you need to provide the source.
edit: Per the comment by Pekka above, I realize that I was assuming this was a web site based project with a server-side database engine. If this is not the case, my answer could be misleading.
I contacted the mysql guys and they said that using MySQL as described in my initial post is free of charge:
Certainly during the development phase
there is no requirement to purchase a
license as you can use the Community
Server for that, however it would make
sense that once you went live you
would purchase MySQL Enterprise to
ensure you had access to the most
stable versions and support.
More information can be found at:
http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/oem/
Community Server is released under the
GNU General Public License Version 2
(also known as the GPLv2). This can
be found at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Provided your use of MySQL Community
Server complies with the GPLv2 then
you are free to use it. If you are in
any doubt, then it is worth looking at
Enterprise.
I also asked if I had to release/publish my code under a open source license if I used the community server. This is the answer I got:
I am not a lawyer, so please take this
into account. Also you probably
should be talking to the sales staff
on what you can and cannot do, you can
get their details from the contact
pages on www.mysql.com. However as I
understand the GPL unless you are
distributing MySQL with your code you
do not need to release your code under
the GPL. If, however, you do
distribute MySQL then you either need
an OEM/ISV license or your code must
be under the GPL, or one of the other
Open Source licenses covered in the
FOSS exceptions listed in the FAQ page
I gave you.
Safe answer: talk to a lawyer.
If I didn't know the safe answer, I'd tell you that you can use any one of those without paying anybody and without having to publish your source code. Luckily, I know the safe answer so I didn't tell you that.
edit — Note that finding the appropriate lawyer to talk to might be a difficult task. The point is that if you're actually starting a business and you feel uncertain of your ability to interpret license terms yourself (which is to say that you feel uncertain of your ability to be your own lawyer), the right thing to do is seek out legal advice from an actual attorney, and not from random unknown people on the internet.
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Does anyone have a recommendation for an open-source or paid (either packaged or SaaS) solution for integrating collaborative development features into your own website? Here's more details:
We currently host an online plugin gallery for our product. Users can upload and download plugins. But users can't easily collaborate on a plugin's development, can't easily report and track bugs on a plugin, can't easily track a plugin's versions or roadmap, etc.
Of course, contributors can host their plugin development on github, sourceforge, google code, codeplex, etc. But keeping users on our website has some advantages. For example:
We can use single-sign-on to avoid yet another username/password required
we can integrate end-user issue tracking into our existing online issue-tracking systems
we can get integrated analytics so we can better meet the needs of top contributors as well as downloaders
We can easily reward reputation points to committers just like we do for people who answer lots of questions
Anyone know a good solution for white-label sites for open-source project developer collaboration?
Atlassian Studio might be what you're after:
Subversion - Source Control
JIRA -Issue tracking
FishEye - Source Code Search
Confluence - Enterprise Wiki
Greenhopper - Agile Planning
Bamboo - Continuous Integration
Crucible - Peer Code Review
All hosted in the cloud, prices start at $125 for 5 developers.
http://www.atlassian.com/hosted/studio/
Alternatively for a cheaper alternative, Atlassian offer open source licenses which would allow you to use each of the above for free, however you'd need to host them yourself, and configure them to talk to each other manually (whereas Studio is a hosted SaaS environment with interoperability already configured out of the box).
If you don't qualify for an Open Source license, and you've got 10 developers or less, you can get a Starter License for every product except Crucible for $10 - full commercial license, with support etc.
(This isn't meant to be an ad for Atlassian, and I don't have any connection with them, I just love their products for this kind of solution).
My recommendation would be RedMine or Trac; Trac would require you to set up a separate instance for each project (TracForge can, I believe, help with that). Another option would be Gitorious (I believe its code is all open-source).
There's also GForge, but I wouldn't recommend it (its UI is like old-school SourceForge; I find that rather clunky).
Since you mentioned GitHub and SourceForge:
GitHub:FI is a white-label version of GitHub
SourceForge used to be available as a white-label version at some point, I have no idea whether that is still true though (Hmm, it seems it is called CollabNet TeamForge now)
before that, SourceForge actually was Open Source up until version 3, and there exist multiple forks of the original software:
Savane, a fork started by the GNU project, the software powering GNU Savannah and Gna!
GForge, a fork started by one of the SourceForge developers, the software powering Alioth (until recently) and RubyForge
FusionForge, a fork of GForge by three of the developers after the parent company took GForge proprietary, the software powering Alioth
Gitorious is an open source competitor to GitHub. Launchpad is going to be released as open source sometime this year, and is also available or sale and/or rent right now, I believe. FogBugz launched Kiln, a Mercurial hosting and code review service.
Can I use mySQL in my commercial windows project? Are there any license issues? Which version should I use?
Surprisingly, since the server is not linked with your application directly, you can distribute the MySQL Community server unmodified or modified, as long as you follow the GPL terms. (in short, if you modify the server, you need to make the modified source available)
The client library is another story, however. If you are distributing your commercial project, you cannot distribute the MySQL client libraries freely along with your software if your software is not GPL-licensed or another OSI-approved open-source license.
This is called the MySQL FOSS license exemption, more can be found out about it here:
http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception/
http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/index.html
You will either need to purchase a license to distribute the mysql client libraries, use another client library (highly unlikely to happen, as there aren't many good libraries that don't wrap the official one) or make your software open-source.
(I am not exactly sure on the legality, but it might be possible to have your customers download the mysql client libraries themselves, but I think it will still constitute 'linking' against a closed source app, therefore still violating the terms. In either case, this is definitely an added hassle for a commercial app.)
It might not be an option for you, but it's worth noting that PostgreSQL is licensed under the BSD license, and sqlite3 is in public domain. Both are a bit more friendly towards linking with commercial code.
As per their explanation, you can use it for free but you will be obligated to release your commercial windows project under the GPL. To keep your code proprietary, you need a commercial license.
Have you every try to search the official site of MySQL for license information?
-- (update) --
OK, since you are "not confirm", let me summarize in short:
"If you want to use MySQL in your commercial program, you must either make your program GPL (i.e., open source, which apparantly not your choice) or Pay Them For a Commercial License".
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I won't release my software source code, and it will be a commercial application. Can I use the MySQL without paying any fee to MySQL? if it is illegal, any alternative database suggest?
Yes, and you don't have to release your project's source (but you do have to release any modification you make to MySQL itself (only those not the whole program) if you also release your project in binary form containing the modified MySQL code)
In more simple terms, if you modify MySQL and those modifications end up being distributed in binary form you have to publicly release the aforementioned modifications.
MySQL itself is open source and can be used as a standalone product in a commercial environment. If you're running mySQL on a web server, you are free to do so for any purpose, commercial or not. If you run a website that uses mySQL, you won't need to release any of your code. You'll be fine.
mySQL has enterprise licenses with (I think) a different code base, and premium support by Sun, but those are entirely optional.
There are limitations on redistribution of mySQL within a closed source product, and linking against mySQL libraries as was pointed out in a different comment. As for redistribution:
OEMs, ISVs, VARs and other
distributors that combine and
distribute commercially licensed
software with MySQL software and do
not wish to distribute the source code
for the commercially licensed software
under version 2 of the GNU General
Public License (the "GPL") must enter
into a commercial license agreement
with Sun.
if you are looking to redistribute mySQL along with a commercial product, check their legal page. I think most companies circumvent this by installing the mySQL server separately.
GPL and linking against client libraries?
I don't know what the fact that the GPL (the license mySQL is distributed under) forbids linking against closed source software means for applications that do not link against mySQL directly, but ship with mySQL client libraries. Do those have to be Open Source? If anybody would like to shed a light on this, in a separate answer or a comment, I'd be most interested.
From what I understood:
If you use MySQL "as is" just for the testing purposes - you are free to use it.
If you modify the MySQL
you are still free to use it BUT you have to make the modifications you made public (GPL is "transfering")
If you redistribute MySQL or work derivated from MySQL in any way, then this says it all:
Q3: As a commercial OEM, ISV or VAR, when should I purchase a commercial license for MySQL software?
A: OEMs, ISVs and VARs that want the benefits of embedding commercial binaries of MySQL software in their commercial applications but do not want to be subject to the GPL and do not want to release the source code for their proprietary applications should purchase a commercial license from Oracle. Purchasing a commercial license means that the GPL does not apply, and a commercial license includes the assurances that distributors typically find in commercial distribution agreements.