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I really want to use a certain tech tool, but the guy wants to charge over $100 for it. It's of sufficient motivation to make me write it myself.
Is there anything wrong with cloning his program, functionality and look, everything and open sourcing it, even though it's a blatant copy? I have no plans to rip his code.
I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I think you could mostly get away with it, as long as you truly make everything yourself and don't violate any trademarks.
Lotus v Borland says you can't copyright the functionality of the user interface. But of course, unless you're prepared to fight expensive lawsuits, this may not actually help you.
Also, another big thing to watch out for is patents. If anything in it is patented, you'll have to license it or go without that functionality.
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Which software license should one use to meet the following simple conditions:
Software is free to use
Software can be re-distributed
Software source is closed and remains my intellectual property
(copywright) and cannot be decompiled/edited.
(If possible) The software cannot be sold.
Thanks in advance.
The whole point of free software is that it can be modified to suit any user's potential requirements, so pretty much by definition, if you want point 3, your software isn't free.
Sounds like shareware. I can't point you to a license I would personally recommend, but Google has lots of results. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware
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I'm writing a small book in software development practices and I want to licensed it as open-source, but I don't how these license thing works. Thanks
You may wish to start your search at the creative commons family of licenses, which provide pre-written licenses with a variety of features (non-commercial use only vs commercial use allowed, etc).
Using pre-written software licenses is probably not the best starting point for anything but software.
First you need to be really clear about what you want to achieve. Do you want to earn money on it in any way or from things like corporate customers? Or maybe you just want to let it out for free for anyone to use as they please. In the latter case, you don't really need any licensing at all.
After you have figured out what you want to achieve, we can help you further.
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I recently found some use of code in some program I was asked to complete. The code it was taken from didn't have a license. This made me think there should be some rules/laws that govern that kind of work. I didn't know what they could be, hence this question.
For my own personal toys I always at least make sure to leave a comment detailing where something came from. At minimum It seems like the decent thing to do.
Many countries have an implicit copyright, so no, it is not in the public domain.
It is absolutely not public domain in most countries; see the Berne convention for copyright.
Study it, throw it away and rewrite it from scratch if you want to be safe - or at least, safe r. This way you only have to worry about software patents.
IANAL, etc.
How do you know that the code was taken? Is it in the comments? If so, you probably should get it in writing from the author. A lack of a license doesn’t mean you can use it, but depending on the country you (and the author) are in, it may be legal. Regardless of the country, the original author’s blessing will go a long way.
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We are evaluating PostSharp for logging purposes to use in a our project (implemented in .Net). Currently it is running in production enviroment. Can mixing with PostSharp raise licencing issues? As far as I know it is partially free. Am I wrong? What future licencing problems (i.e. is PostSharp planning to be non-free for future releases) can we face, if there are any?
The PostSharp licensing FAQ explains this in great detail.
Can mixing with PostSharp raise licencing issues?
You're unlikely to have future problems if you don't link to the part that actually does the transformations (that's PostSharp.Core). PostSharp.Laos and PostSharp.Public are what most applications will typically link to.
As far as I know it is partially free. Am I wrong?
It's all free as in beer, unless you (1) link to Core and (2) need to distribute your app outside your company. In that case, you have to buy a license. Core is released under GPL.
See the licensing options, which neatly summarizes answers to both those questions at the top of the page.
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This is mostly a theoritical question, but I'm wondering what the proper way would be to accomplish the following.
Assume I have a few utilities, functions, and reference implementations that I use when building a web site for a client. Some of "my" reference code is re-used as-is, some is slightly modified. Also, as part of the agreement with the client, I agree to turn over all code and IP rights.
(I know the best answer is probably "talk to a lawyer" but really, how many lawyers are going to be versed in software licencing? I imagine I'd get better, more accurate here than picking a lawyer out of the phone book).
What sort of copyright notification and/or licencing should I include in the code I turn over to the client, if I want to be able to re-use "my" code on other projects?
Check out NOLO's "Legal Guide to Web & Software Development." It covers various contracts, license agreements, and IP ownership agreements related to software development. I have used the sample contracts as a template for a few of my agreements which are later reviewed by my attorney.
At the very least this book can help you understand what the terms, like transfer of IP ownership, really mean for you the developer.
If you turn over the "IP rights", doesn't that imply you are transferring ownership of the code? Which would mean that you can't re-use it without their permission or license, since you no longer own it?
You might want to look into revising your agreements with your clients, so that you can retain ownership and rights to your own work...