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There are a number of open integrated development environments which offer developer to make and compile software, such as the replit.com platform. Will the author of the code have full rights on the software or part of it will belong to the IDE creators because of using their server?

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  • According to section 9 of the terms of service of replit.com/site/terms, if you make a public Repl or on a public "Teams for Friends" with their service, then you agree that the the content you post there will become "automatically" MIT licensed.
    – Brandin
    Jan 26 at 14:59

1 Answer 1

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As we have said, and as you know, if the IDE is a piece of software you download and run locally, then generally speaking the IDE's licence has no effect on the licence under which your code can be released.

If, however, the IDE is purely web-based, and offered as SaaS (software as a service), then it will depend on the provider's ToS (terms of service). There have certainly been some pretty awful land grabs in ToS history, and if the IDE provider you choose has something in their ToS that gives all rights in created code to them, well, you just gave your code away.

SaaS has a number of dangers, and this is one of them. If you don't want that, and you don't want to be reading endless ToS documents, don't use a SaaS IDE. You can read the same argument made more cogently and at more length here.

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    many thanks for the answer. Yes, I meant SaaS IDEs. Your answer made me understanding the problem
    – user29156
    Jan 24 at 13:23
  • But what about working on a project under GPL? I mean, regardless of the terms of service, the code remains under GPL. Jan 25 at 12:46
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    @JFabianMeier essentially, if you upload third-party GPL code to a SaaS provider whose ToS does any kind of land-grab, you've just violated the third-party's copyright by conveying code under terms other than GPL. Don't do that.
    – MadHatter
    Jan 25 at 12:54
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    The question of course remains if this land-grab is enforceable, especially if you are not a company, but just a private person. Jan 25 at 13:45
  • The only time I saw license restrictions was in a widely used expensive commercial compiler that had a free (no money)version. With the restriction that you couldn’t make money with the free version. You were allowed to write software with the intent to sell it if you paid for the commercial version before any sale.
    – gnasher729
    Jan 25 at 21:31

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