I am not a lawyer, but… Le 31/07/2018 à 15:41, Roger Matthews via gtk-app-devel-list a écrit : > I have developed an application using GTK+3.10. What copy-write > protection can you (GTK+) provide for me.
GTK+ doesn't "provide copyright protection" for software using it, and no library does. GTK+ is licensed under the LGPL license, which basically means you can use it as a dynamic library from software distributed in any license (basically, it being free software or proprietary software). > I have been told that > copywrite is free and automatic and that to protect the software from > piracy I need sufficient money to prove prior usage in a court of > law. Yes, the simple fact you wrote the software is enough. The concept of "proving prior usage" is only when there's actually litigation, and you need to prove you're actually the original author, so it's indeed yours. I have no idea what's legal in which countries, but some people mentioned sending yourself a copy of the software through snail mail (with the post office stamp on it) and keep it unopened as evidence, but I guess any method that can tie a legal date with your software is fine. > I don't see how the requirement of including my source code in > the package will allow for successful commercialisation when someone > can just simply copy the source-code. What requirement? You're not *required* to distribute your software under an open source kind of license, GTK+'s license allows you to dynamically link it to a closed source software. You're the one to decide here, you just need to make sure you follow the clauses of the licenses of the libraries you're using, but in the case of GTK+ you can still select a proprietary license for your software if you really want. Not that I think it's a good idea, but I guess it's irrelevant :) However, if you're distributing GTK+ yourself, you're required to provide the sources for it, but if it's just upstream it might be OK to just link to the upstream sources. But that only applies to the parts that *are* under a free software license -- well, under any license telling you you have to do that. You're also confusing copyright and making money. Pretty much any source code has a form of copyright on it, the copyright is basically the rules that control how it can be copied. Free software licenses, even if often referred as "copyleft" for the wordplay, is a form of copyright: it states the rules for redistributing, it just happens to require openness (in case of e.g. GPL and cousins) instead of disallowing it. > I have no problems about > acknowledging GTK+ for providing the GUI development platform and for > helping with problems in coding, etcetera. I'm not sure what's the rule about acknowledgment in case of using a library. I guess it's customary to mention you're using it, but it might not be required to do so at a user level. > Without adequate > protection this requirement (including the source-code) renders GTK+ > useless as far as any kind of commercialisation is concerned, please > enlighten me on this matter. I guess you misunderstood the GTK+ license, that *does not* state that you have to distribute the sources of your application [1]. You do have to distribute the sources of *changes made to GTK+* in case you did some, but that's it. This said, there are plenty of successful companies making money out of free and open source software, they just don't sell the code itself usually -- although they *could*, so long as people will buy it. Regards, Colomban [1] well, I don't wanna confuse you, but it's a little more subtle than that: you're only required to distribute *derivative* work under the same license (LGPL for GTK+). What is a *derivative* work is the question here, and dynamically linking your application to GTK+ does not make your application a derivative work of GTK+. Statically linking it would, though. You can find an enormous amount of info on that on the Internet, and you can obviously carefully read the GTK+ license. _______________________________________________ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
