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I am currently part of the development of an 'engine' that generates a video out of a MIDI file and includes special effects. We would like to make the code open-source, but we need a kind of license I am unable to find.

Basically, we want the software to be required to have a watermark on the beginning and/or end crediting the original program. The watermark may be modified by the user (Made using {NEWNAME}) but must also contain a link to the original project (e.g. You can find the original software at {LINK}).

Is there a license that can do this, and if not, what should we do?

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closed as off-topic by ArtOfCode♦ Apr 5 '18 at 10:33

  • This question does not appear to relate to open source, within the scope defined in the help center.
If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's asking for a nonfree license, which we don't recommend on this site. – ArtOfCode♦ Apr 5 '18 at 10:33
  • Okay, sorry about that. I doubted what he wanted would have been in existence anyways. – Glitch Apr 12 '18 at 22:53
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In general you will not find an Open Source license that will apply to the user generated output of a tool. In some cases where a substantial portion of your licensed content is copied into the output you may be able to apply license terms to the output (e.g. like code generated using Bison or similar)

See https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html

and

See https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0-with-bison-exception.html

What you want is likely the domain of a commercial or "vanity" license or through making binaries available that do what you want and hope that your target audience finds it difficult to modify and compile you code. You may find this causes you to lose goodwill with your community.

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