Re: I give up...
Thanks for the replies... Arnoud wrote: ...release it under the GPL ... (and keep it) proprietary in the internal project... Of course you cannot ever use any modifications from the external, GPL-licensed project in your proprietary internal project. How will your company benefit from the release as open source? We want to benefit from the modifications and support made by the community. That is why it should be under one license only. David wrote: as i understand it, there is no requirement to use the BSD license downstream, but rather to merely provide the associated notices. From the replies, I gather that the BSD, MIT and ZLib licenses are the same ??? If not please highlight some differences... Witch of these licenses gives developers the most freedom, and the most protection. Are all of them GPL compatible Does any of these protect against someone taking the source and making their own proprietary version, without recognizing the developers that built it? I suppose giving full freedom to my company, also gives it to others like Microsoft? Jacobus Vosloo -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: I give up...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Arnoud wrote: ...release it under the GPL ... (and keep it) proprietary in the internal project... Of course you cannot ever use any modifications from the external, GPL-licensed project in your proprietary internal project. How will your company benefit from the release as open source? We want to benefit from the modifications and support made by the community. That is why it should be under one license only. If your code is incorporated in a GPL-licensed project, and people make modifications in the project, you *cannot* use these modifications in a proprietary product. From the replies, I gather that the BSD, MIT and ZLib licenses are the same ??? BSD requires you to publish certain notices in the documentation if you do a binary-only release. MIT requires you to keep the notices in the source intact. zlib/libpng forbids you from saying you wrote that software if you didn't. All are GPL-compatible. That means, anyone can take this code and combine it with GPL-licensed code. If the result is distributed, it must be distributed under GPL. Hence modifications to the distributed code will also be under GPL. You then cannot use the modifications in your proprietary software. Does any of these protect against someone taking the source and making their own proprietary version, without recognizing the developers that built it? No. For that you want the LGPL, Mozilla PL or the GPL. BSD requires acknowledgements, but that's it. I suppose giving full freedom to my company, also gives it to others like Microsoft? You are free to use your own code however you want. You can keep it proprietary in one product, and release it under GPL with another product. You can make modifications to the proprietary version without having to release those in the GPL version. What you can *not* do is take other people's improvements and put them in the proprietary version, unless you have their permission. Licenses like the LGPL and GPL require contributors to give permission, but then you can only use those contributions under those licenses. You could draft a license that makes software publicly available under open source conditions. You can then add to that license that you must be given the right to use everyone's modifications any way you want. This however is not very popular with the community and you will not attract many developers willing to modify your software. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
I give up...
I am having a hard time trying to find the right open source license for a project I am working on. History: For the past 6 months I have been trying to find a good open source license to develop my code with, but the more licenses I see, the more confusing it becomes? :-( I am trying to convince my manager to develop a specific component as open source. The problem is that this component will be used in and/or included into many projects that's code must stay proprietary and secret. It will also be used by a group of open source programmers inside their potentially GNU GPL licensed software. As far as possible I want to avoid licensing it differently for the involved parties. I.e. no dual license I would have loved to make it LGPL but the component will not be linked in as a library but as files and code fragments. I looked at the BSD license, but the clause below make me unsure. The proprietary product that will depend on this component must be released under it's own license completely. From the BSD license Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. I will greatly appreciate any pointers regarding OSS approved licenses. Regards Jacobus Vosloo Application Integrator for .Net Invision - DaimlerChrysler - East-London - South Africa Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: +27 43 706 2477 Fax: +27 43 706 2612 Cell: +27 83 361 3203 Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where stated otherwise. Emails can contain viruses; make sure your system is protected before opening any attached files. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: I give up...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am trying to convince my manager to develop a specific component as open source. The problem is that this component will be used in and/or included into many projects that's code must stay proprietary and secret. It will also be used by a group of open source programmers inside their potentially GNU GPL licensed software. As far as possible I want to avoid licensing it differently for the involved parties. I.e. no dual license If your company has developed the code, they can release it under the GPL to that group of programmers, and at the same time keep it entirely proprietary in the internal project. The copyright holder does not have to adhere to his own license. So if you publish the code under the GPL, you can still use the code in the internal project without having to do anything special. Of course you cannot ever use any modifications from the external, GPL-licensed project in your proprietary internal project. How will your company benefit from the release as open source? I looked at the BSD license, but the clause below make me unsure. The proprietary product that will depend on this component must be released under it's own license completely. The MIT license may be more to your liking. It allows incorporation into any project, with the sole requirement that you must keep intact the copyright notices and the MIT license in the source code. There are no obligations on a binary distribution, so the project with closed source does not have to publish anything. The MIT license is compatible with the GPL, so the code can be added to a GPL-licensed project. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php An even more liberal license is the zlib/libpng license. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/zlib-license.php Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: I give up...
begin [EMAIL PROTECTED] quotation: I am trying to convince my manager to develop a specific component as open source. The problem is that this component will be used in and/or included into many projects that's code must stay proprietary and secret. It will also be used by a group of open source programmers inside their potentially GNU GPL licensed software. As far as possible I want to avoid licensing it differently for the involved parties. I.e. no dual license I would have loved to make it LGPL but the component will not be linked in as a library but as files and code fragments. What you might consider doing is using the LGPL, and adding a clarification that explicitly states which portions of the code you consider to be the library. -- Forget the damned motor car and build cities for lovers and friends. -- Lewis Mumford end -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
