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When I'm defining a license for my open software project, should I consider my project's dependencies and based on them define license for my project?
Can anybody give me an example of license infringement in terms of dependencies licenses and my project license?
When I'm defining a license for my open software project, should I consider my project's dependencies and based on them define license for my project?
Yes, you should learn about which usage terms your dependencies have, so you know what you can do with the code.
If you have multiple dependencies, you need to check whether you can use them alltogether and under which conditions.
This can influence your own licence choice as well, as most software licenses explicitly operate that way.
You could run into problems if, for example, you link against a GPL library but your license is not GPL compatible. Here is the FSF faq entry on the subject.
If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any software which uses it has to be under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license?
Yes, because the software as it is actually run includes the library.
The same situation could arise if you combine any two incompatible licenses, depending on how they interact, but I think that will be the major pain point.
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I am trying to figure this out since a few days now and find no way to do this:
I have a software I want to release under the AGPL so the base system "is open-source", but my software has a plugin interface, where external plugins can be loaded at runtime (so no separation which the GPL would allow).
I now what to make it possible to others to develop non-GPL plugins, as I do not like "this part" of the GPL.
Is there a ways to somehow allow this as an exception to the GPL or in any other way?
Or is there a license which has the same copyleft for the code itself but permits linked software to be under a different license?
I already though of releasing the plugin interface under a different license (like LGPL), but to quote a well know CEO: "The GPL is like cancer". This is not possible, as the plugin interface must be GPL, because it is also linked into the (A)GPL'ed main project.
Could I solve this with some kind of "weird" dual-licensing of the plugin interface?
P.S.: My software is developed using .net 4.5 and C# if that matters anyhow.
You may wish to release the API libraries/assemblies as LGPL, which allows the user to link those in without "tainting" their software, thus the plugins are taint-free, but still requires enhancements to the API libraries to be released.
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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.
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I've written a Ruby gem that I've licensed under the MIT license, but I think I could greatly improve the test coverage by using an AGPL library in my specs. The actual library code I've written (that would be executed by people using the gem) would never use this AGPL library, it would just be for running the tests in a development environment when running the gem specs.
Is it legal for me to then license my spec code under AGPL while still licensing my library/application code under MIT? Is there anything special I would have to do with regard to my GitHub repository (e.g. a separate repo for the specs) or my .gemspec file (e.g. not bundling the specs and AGPL library with the gem)?
First of all, I am not a lawyer.
Let's assume that the library you're going to use is named L.
Since your application code is not a derivative work of L it is not affected by AGPL's licensing. Therefore you're free to choose rules under which it is distributed.
Your test code is a derivative work of L in the sense of AGPL and as a result if you publish it you have to use terms of AGPL.
Storing files with different licenses in a single repository is not an issue. What is important is to clearly and unambigously state what is the license of each file. The best idea is to put relevant notes both in files' headers and a README or LICENSE file. What I mean is something like
All files in the test directory are published under terms of (...). All remaining files are published under terms of (...) unless otherwise stated.
Remember to add this information in each form of distribution of your project, i.e. a gem file, a tarball and so on. If you have to specify terms under which your whole gem is published you have to provide both licenses. In the terms of a gemspec it would mean
spec.licenses = ['MIT', 'AGPL']
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i want to publish my software under a opensource license with the following conditions:
you are allowed to:
Share — to copy, distribute and
transmit the work
use a modified
version of the code in your
application
you are not allowed to:
publish modified versions of the code
use the code in anything commercial
is there a software license out there that fits my needs ?
Having a noncommercial clause is against the spirit of opensource. So no, there isn't. And if you do make one yourself then you should not be calling it opensource but instead call it a non-commercial license.
There are in fact code with the kind of licensing you are talking about and there are widely recognised by the opensource community as being non-opensource. MINIX (by Tanenbaum) is one of them. The code is freely available and public and anyone can see but have severe restrictions on re-publishing modifications. MINIX is widely considered to be a closed-source piece of code.
Lots of commercial, proprietay, closed-source embedded operating systems are actually distributed as code and have only copyright laws protecting them (instead of complex, byzantine DRM). Just the fact that people can see your source code does not make it open source.
One last example. Windows (including XP, Vista and Seven). Microsoft makes the source code Windows available to anyone who needs it for non-commercial, educational purposes provided you sign an NDA. Their source license sounds a lot like what you want. Check out the license here: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensing/basics/wrklicense.mspx. I doubt anyone would argue that Windows is opensource.
You can publish code under any licence you want but it will only be F/OSS, Open Source, if it complies with the OSI definition : http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd. Your conditions are incompatible in several ways.
Take note that almost all players in Open Software use OSI-compliant licences - you would be going completely against all current opinion and practice.
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How would one follow the proper steps in order to license a "package" under the terms of Artistic License 2, as published by the Perl Foundation.
Is there a guide, such as GNU's GPL how-to that I'm missing?
I've only found CPAN's Licensing Guide, I believe it would apply for external use too, wouldn't it?
Otherwise, I presume adding a notice at the start of each source code file, and including a copy of the license itself with the distribution would do the trick.
Still, since licensing is quite an important issue, I'd like to hear any views on this.
Before I start, I must warn you I'm not a lawyer.
As far as I know, the way you communicate the license to others is not dependent on any specific license. If you're the sole author of the work, you hold the copyright and have the exclusive rights to decide what is allowed with respect to distribution, modification etc. You can communicate your decision through a well known licence to help potential users of your work understand the terms of usage.
From a practical view, adding a copyright notice to the distribution & copyright headers pointing to that notice to source files should be enough. Also, the licence should be clearly mentioned on the site where you provide download of the distribution.