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
So I am almost finished with my first app. It was constructed in Visual Studio/C#. I am now trying to determine which license to run with. I plan to provide the program free of charge to businesses and consumers, however, I do not want to publish the source code.
What is the best licensing format to go with? This application is kind of a teaser for a more powerful version so I would like to publish this one for free and hopefully make some money selling the 'power user' version.
I will be packaging Putty with this. I am about to go read their site as I may need to role my own SSH client.
I will be headed to my lawyer this week. Just want to get a bit of knowledge before I talk to her so I don't look like a dumb fool. Thanks in advance for your input!
Putty uses the MIT licence, so all you need to do is incorporate that licence along with your software. For your code you can use whatever licence you choose, no one will ask for your code unless you explicitly want to make it public.
Related
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
Background:
This question caused me some sleepless nights over the last month. I'm an independent software developer and have recently finished the work on my first application. I've read a lot of articles about license agreements but I still don't know how to tackle this task in an appropriate way. My application handles user files. In every method I check for consistency & errors and I've betatested it on several systems for more than 6 months. I'm very sure nothing should go wrong, but I want to be on the save side.
Are license agreements by themselves protected by a copyright or can
I just take one and replace the companies name? (All of them look pretty similar to my untrained eyes)
If I'm allowed to use one, am I allowed to edit it?
I don't want my users to be "kept in a cage". I want them to be as free as they could be. For example I want them to be able to freely install my software on all their personal devices.
Where can I find non-Opensource licenses*? I've been searching for a
long time now. I found this Page but it actually confused me more than it helped.
I plan on publishing my app on the Mac-AppStore. Are there licenses
I can't use there?
(As I mentioned above I want a "User License" model that allows the user to install it on all of his Macs)
If you've got any kind of experience with this topic, feel free to share your insights. It's well appreciated!
*Edit: By "non-Opensource licenses" I mean licenses for commercial applications.
1.
You are free to take an existing agreement you find and adapt it to your ends. There is no originality of expression in a licensing agreement itself that would be covered under copyright law preventing your use of its language -- assuming the language fits your circumstances. You should always understand what you're agreeing to. :-)
P.S. Authority: I've worked with large law firms for 20 years as a software developer, licensing my software to them and also consulting with some of them when they had to write contracts for their own clients and didn't undertand the technical issues.
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'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.
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 seem to recall hearing at some point (I believe it was MIX09) that Microsoft has a licensing model of some sort where a business can consume licenses for up to two years, free of charge, until they reach a point where they are stable position and can pay their licensing at the end of two years. However, I can't find information regarding it online.
I want to say that possibly stackoverflow used this licensing model to kick start their site. Is anyone familiar with this?
In addition to BizSpark (as per #paul) there are also WebSpark and, as of May 2010, the developer MAPS programmes.
Webspark information is here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/default.aspx
Details of the Action Pack (MAPS) are currently here: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40132997
I'm fairly certain that in all cases availablility varies by your location - but if you're producing stuff for/with/on Microsoft tools/platforms then they're all worth a look.
You're thinking of BizSpark:
http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/
There is also the Empower program if you're an existing business, not a startup.
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
This is more of a licencing issue than a code question. I really like the ckeditor editor and would like to use it in my freelance projects which I do for clients. However upon reading the license page it has me in a bit of a confusion. DO I have to buy licences if I intend to use this in cms websites that I build myself and hand over to clients?
If so then what are my alternate options which don't cost anything?
Its should be ok, if you don't change anything of its source, IMHO.
Integrating CKEditor in commercial
software, taking care of satisfying
the Open Source licenses terms, while
not able or interested on supporting
CKEditor and its development.
I am not a lawyer, but the dual licensing model would appear to not prevent you from using the open source licensed CKEditor in your cms / client projects, as long as the terms of the chosen license are met.
What you cannot do is sell, give away or otherwise distribute the editor to third parties without providing them with access to the source code and the license attached to the product.
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 going to development a product related to security. It's my personal belief that any security related product should release it's source code for review. However, I also want to sell it as a commercial product and keep the code ownership to myself and don't expect deviated work.
Is there a software license for this purpose? Thanks.
The Microsoft Reference Source License comes to mind for this kind of requirement.
Ordinary copyright law should do this - if you don't grant a license to anyone, then people can read your code if you publish it, but you retain all rights to it.
I would agree with you with respect to review, but that doesn't mean that it needs to be published in the public domain. You could make it available upon request but require that anyone obtaining it (a) not disclose the code itself to another and (b) not use the code to develop a product in competition with yours. Get a lawyer to fine-tune the language. In this way, you can have your code available for inspection and verification but retain some reasonable assurance that it won't simply be copied by unscrupulous competitors -- or, at least, have a more solid case in the event that it is used without your consent.
Yes, it's called copyright + non-disclosure agreement.