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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.
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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.
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Imagine I found some piece of code, no information about its license. I can't find any contact information, or the contact doesn't respond.
So my question is: Is it licensed by a default license? Am I allowed to modify the code, redistribute it, sell it or what ever? Or do I have to treat this software as completely restricted stuff?
This is not legal advice
If there is any doubt in your mind of where it came from you should not use it. Just because the license isn't there doesn't mean there isn't one. Someone else could have stripped the license from the code and reposted it. That wouldn't give you carte-blanche to use it.
It is very possible that at a later date the original author who did Copyright (which he gets the copyright by default) could come after you.
In all reality it would all depend on his ability to enforce his copyright. This is what is happening will all these tech companies claiming their IP has been infringed on. The Linux, Google, Microsoft, Oracle debacles are all because of some similar problem to this.
If it isn't that complicated, just rewrite the code.
The default license is - if obtained the code eligible - that you are allowed to read the code. And that's it. IANAL.
Where did you find it? A web-site (contact webmaster), a post (contact the author, or leave amessage in the forum)? Legacy code in your company?
You should try to follow the breadcrumbs and try to get to the author to clarify it. Document what you do to contact him, so at least you can prove you have not acted in bad faith in case someone complains.
If you have done that and nothing comes out, I would use it in my code without much of a hassle. If the author wanted it copyrighted, he should have attached a copyright notice to it.
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I didn't see any license information on top of a web page's source code. Now I'd like to copy/paste a javascript code to emulate the behaviour of AJAX into my software.
But can I do this?
At least in the United States, every work is automatically granted copyright protection of its owner, regardless of any copyright declaration or licensing information. You can only be granted rights to use or re-use works under the explicit grant of permissions by copyright owners.
If there's no license on the files, then you have no right to re-use them in your own projects. You're free to email them and ask politely, or search around and see if those tools are freely available elsewhere (and the site where you found them stripped off the documenting headers), or to take inspiration from their site and try to replicate it yourself.
There's enough excellent libraries out there (jQuery and prototype.js come to mind immediately) with enough amazing functionality that you ought to be able to build something cool on your own, in case the owners of the site you found don't want to share their code.
No. Unless you have a license, you don't have a license.
Take a book, it might not be written "You allowed to read it and make a short citation. You should not print copies of it and give it away to people. Neither are you allowed to upload it on piratebay". However, usually you are not allowed to do it.
In most countries, software is covered by copyright as books and other things.
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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.
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Is there any codeplex license that allows some one to use my code any way they want but not to create a program that does the same thing that my programs do?
The only way you can prevent a program from reproducing functionality is with patents.
Following on from your comment:
You will need to have a lawyer draft a license as you have very specific needs. The license will have to specify the exact conditions the code can be used under (or the conditions it cannot be used under.)
I am not aware of any "generic" license which covers this type of arrangement. And there are a wealth of issues to consider, for example:
Step 1. You have automatic copyright over your source code. This gives you, and you along the ability to distribute your application legally.
Step 2. You release the code under an open source license. The code is still yours, but now people can use it for whatever they wish, including recompiling and distributing the project under a different name (but with attribution?)
Step 3. You want to impose a restriction on the open source license, which you are within your rights to do. However this has to be very carefully worded and thought out.
Can I use part of the code in a similar application? How do you define similar?
What if I modify it? What about derivative works? Are they the same thing as your product?
Does it cover future versions of the code?
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. These are just ramblings that I can recall from the legal and ethical modules from my CS degree. All I can do is advise you to hire a lawyer to draft a license.