Using a commercial product that uses open source licenses [closed] - licensing

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I am using Telerik Rad Controls for Silverlight that is intended to be used in a commercial product which seems perfectly fine as long as I say in the about box that it uses it I believe.
However, Telerik has a folder containing 12 licenses that it uses. Now my question is, do I need to redistribute all of these licenses along with my product also? I am thinking that if you use a number of products each with different licenses that you soon end up having a large number in the finished product. Is that correct?

From my understanding of RadControls, you need to recompile the assemblies using protection that only your app can load. Then you can redistribute the software as long as you give proper copyright messages for telerik:
Taken from the License Agreement for Silverlight
1.3 Redistribution Rights.
1.3.1 Subject to the terms of this Agreement, You are granted a limited license to redistribute the Software solely as part of bundled software solutions for internal company use, hosted applications, commercial solutions deployed at Your Authorized End-Users sites, or shrink-wrapped software offerings in which the Software is integrated (collectively “Integrated Products”). “Integrated Products”, as defined herein, are limited to those software solutions which: (i) are developed by Your Licensed Developers; (ii) add substantial functionality beyond the functionality provided by the incorporated components of the Software; and (iii) are not commercial alternatives for, or competitive in the marketplace with, the Software or any components of the Software.
To recompile the assemblies using protection, you can follow the steps listed on this page - Protecting Telerik RadControls assembly

Related

ExtJS GPL and Commercial license issues [closed]

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
We will develop one commercial software for one company, and this software will be sold to customers of the company. This software contains font-end JS/HTML based codes and back-end C++ codes. We want to use ExtJS4.2 to develop font-end module.
We will not modify ExtJS code itself and just use it for the library, but I don't know if extending ExtJS type/class will be treated as "modifying ExtJS".
If we do not want to make back-end codes open source, which license do we need?
If we have to use Commercial License, Could we first use GPLv3 to try the ExtJS for learning and training privately in company, and use Commercial license when we decide to release software and begin to charge?
If we have to use Commercial License, which kind of Commercial License do we need to buy? We have one team containing several people to develop font-end module.
"Could we first use GPLv3 to try the ExtJS for learning and training privately in company, and use Commercial license when we decide to release software and begin to charge?"
Not according to Sencha's own commercial license. See this section of http://www.sencha.com/legal/sencha-sdk-software-license-agreement
"The Open Source version of the Software (“GPL Version”) is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License versions 3.0 (“GPL”) and not under this Agreement. If You, or another third party, has, at any time, developed all (or any portions of) the Application(s) using the GPL Version, You may not combine such development work with the Software and must license such Application(s) (or any portions derived there from) under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3, a copy of which is located at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html."
I think all your questions are answered here.

licensing consideration of using itextsharp in a saas project [closed]

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I might need to use iTextSharp for a project I'm working on. I'd prefer to use the latest version so I'm trying to understand what the full implications of the GNU Affero General Public License is. I've read though the FSF documents but still have questions. I'm not going to modify it in any way, just call it from a component (windows service) that I've written. This component references other modules from the product I work on.
Currently the component is deployed on a server which runs website instances of the product for our clients. The component does work for all of the sites. We don't plan on distributing the product to clients yet, but it is on our roadmap for the future.
Would the component come under the GNU Affero General Public License when I use iTextSharp and therefore need to be made available for download? Would the other modules from the product referenced by my component come under the license as well?
Basically for the situation I've outlined above what would I need to do to keep within the licence agreement?
Thanks
K
i was also looking into using iTextSharp in a web application.
However the following paragraph from http://itextpdf.com/terms-of-use/ clarified the licensing implications:
Buying such a license is mandatory as soon as you develop commercial activities involving the iText software without disclosing the source code of your own applications. These activities include: offering paid services to customers as an ASP, serving PDFs on the fly in a web application, shipping iText with a closed source product.
Regards.
iTextSharp uses the LGPL license agreement and not the Affero model, http://www.java2s.com/Open-Source/CSharp/PDF/iTextSharp/CatalogiTextSharp.htm , License: GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL) says it right there.
iText is different from iTextSharp and both have separate licenses

Which opensource license to use to retain commercial rights for myself [closed]

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I am starting an opensource project.
I want to allow the following:
Free for noncommercial use, bins and source mods, like with the GPL, but I would like to retain commercial rights for myself, and provide another license for commercial use for customers who prefer that option.
The number of licensing options seem a bit overwhelming. So my question is:
Which opensource license should I
use?
Which commercial license should I
use, if there are any standard ones
available? Or should I come up with
my own one here?
There is no problem with dual-licensing. GPL is fine for the noncommercial variant, and is widely accepted.
With the commercial one, I do not know of any standard ones. I would recommend you write one, that really suits your needs.
There is Hanselminutes Podcast on licenses here: Open Source Software Licensing with Jonathan Zuck of ACT Online. Towards the end they talk about the dual licensing of the MySQL database.
There is also a transscript of the podcast as PDF, have a look at the end of the first column on page 7.
No open source license (as defined by the Open Source Initiative) will forbid commercial use of software. You can use a version of the GPL to disallow taking your software proprietary; companies could still use it internally, or distribute it for their own purposes, but they couldn't package it up and sell it as normal shrinkwrap software. Don't use a license like Boost or BSD, as they allow unlimited commercial usage with no restrictions.
You should decide what commercial use you want to allow, and that will depend heavily on the software and what people might want to use it for.

How to license a project [closed]

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I have written a project for my students organization. I would like to share it between many organizations and I want them to use it for free. So I thought that releasing the project on GPL licence (or other silimar). However I don't want that somebody use this project for commercial purpose for free. How should I license this project? Is there any license that is suitable for that? Or should I release two copies of my project on different licences?
You should consult a lawyer to get good legal advice.
However, that being said, GPL is a very common license for this type of scenario. It doesn't, explicitly, restrict commercial use, but it does require that any distribution include full source and full distribution rights under the GPL. This effectively excludes commercial use.
For commercial purposes, you can easily negotiate distribution under a second license, even one specific to that company.
My company has licensed software written at universities and distributed publicly under GPL in exactly this manner.
I Am Not A Lawyer. If its an app that runs over a network, such as a web app, you should also consider the AGPL since the GPL will not prevent people from running the application over a network and then refusing to release their modifications to people who use the application (over the network).
You should probably license your project with 2 different licenses: a free software license and a commercial license.
I remember a nice article about how to choose a free software license depending on your goals.
In any case, consult a lawyer.
If you release under the GPL, no-one can use your code unless their project is also GPL-licensed.
Technically, if you forbid commercial use, your software is not "Free Software". There are several "nonfree" licenses that do what you ask, there is a list at the FSF website, e,g. the University of Utah Public License. Note the harsh criticism that the Free Software Foundation has for this nonfree license.

Community License Agreement for Commercial (SaaS) software? [closed]

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
I've got a commercial SaaS application, an online collaboration/lean project mgmt tool. I want to offer a "Community Edition", with specific limitations on how the software can be used, for free. For example
free for groups using it to manage open source projects
free to K-12 teachers to use in the classroom
free for authors collaborating on Lean/Kanban/AgileSoftwareDevelopment books and research papers.
free for community conference organizers, user group organizers, etc.
The license would grant use of the software with limitations. The software itself can enforce limitations on the number of users/projects. I'm looking for a license agreement / EULA that I can use to specify what uses the software can be used for (see above). It would restrict the users from using it in different ways, such as for commercial use, managing consulting projects, client work, etc.
I've been combing the web for good examples of such agreements, and so far coming up short. Any ideas? To be clear, this would not be an open source license of any kind. It would cover the use of commercial software, for specific "community" uses, as we define them.
I'd pay a lawyer and have him write up the EULA.
You'll forget something, or have some sort of loophole you won't notice.
It's always best to ask for legal advice from a lawyer.
You could do worse than start with a terms of service document. Some companies and products have put their TOS under the Creative Commons license, so you would be free to use that to get started. You could have a look at the one from Wordpress for instance.
Have a look at how Atlassian or JetBrains do it. They offer Jira instances/IntellijIDEA licenses for open source projects and project committers and have been doing so for a long time with great success.
If you start without a fully prepared license agreement, at least do not forget to state that the license is subject to change at any time and the user agrees to any future change or has to stop using the service immediately.

Resources