Questions tagged [commercial]
Commercial activity is anything to make money. This tag is for questions about making money with Open Source / Free Software, or other interaction between open projects and commercial activity. Warning: Open Source / Free Software can be commercial as well. Do not use this tag to mean not-open-source. Use the [proprietary] or [closed-source] tags instead.
248
questions
3
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1
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How do I properly put third-party dependencies under MIT on my copyright notice for a published MacOS app on the App Store?
If IconCast is the name of a close-sourced app I'm publishing that makes money, and AppIconSetGen, an open source library under the MIT license made by someone else that I made some changes to (which ...
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1
vote
1
answer
57
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Can I use part of a MIT-licensed library as training data for an AI that will be used commercially?
Background:
I am working on a business to provide support for independent musicians, and I would like to use this and this to essentially copy and paste this information as training data (I’m planning ...
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1
vote
1
answer
76
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Can I use CIS Benchmarks to create a product? [closed]
CIS Benchmark is freely distributed under creative commons licence which says "use as is".
CIS has several assessment and hardening tools based on their benchmarks and all of them are paid.
...
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3
votes
1
answer
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Gimp and Inkscape on Android: licensing (GPL?)
I have found the following apps on the Google Play store. They are traditional Linux apps for drawing, that are running on Android (with some modification to the source code, I believe).
I would like ...
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votes
1
answer
137
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Can I use Qt for closed source commercial software? [duplicate]
I am developing an application for geological research that I intend to sell for commercial purposes. With it I need a GUI too. I started using tkinter, but it seems to be, at least for me, somehow ...
4
votes
0
answers
77
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Supply license information in a compound commercial product
Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure if this is the correct stack-exchange for this matter.
We're a small to medium company in the EU (about 70 employees). We develop and sell equipment and accompanying ...
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-1
votes
1
answer
88
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If I make extensive changes to open source software and open source my changes, can I charge for commercial use of the derived work?
Many of my original nonderived projects are on GitHub and some projects are licenced under BSD, MIT or GPL. They use languages like Python, C and Java.
If I wanted to create a new product that was ...
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3
votes
0
answers
94
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How does commercial GPL software work in practice? [duplicate]
A small independent company develops an innovative product, licensed under GPL. A sizable investment of many months of R&D to bring the initial release, and a non-trivial cost to maintain and ...
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3
votes
0
answers
99
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Publishing GPLv3 code on Steam
I own a project called Luminol currently licensed under GPlv3 I'd like to distribute on Steam. If possible, I'd like to keep Luminol as GPLv3, mainly to ensure modifications of Luminol are public. I'...
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2
votes
0
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211
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Commercial usage of sentence-transformers/multi-qa-mpnet-base-cos-v1
We are trying to use a HuggingFace Embedding model - multi-qa-mpnet-base-cos-v1 for an internal Large Language Model powered application. While reading the documentation it says (not verbatim):
For ...
7
votes
2
answers
1k
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Do physical assets created directly from GPLed, copyleft digital designs (not programs or libraries) acquire the same license?
Situation: I use LGPL licensed software to create some digital assets that contain original designs. I don't modify the original LGPL software in the process; I just use it. The primary use of the ...
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4
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1
answer
234
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Can I notarize my MacOS package that contains LGPL dynamic library?
I am commercial software developer, and my piece of software dynamically calls the LGPL v2.1/LGPL v3 library. Am I allowed to notarize my installation package that includes LGPL dynamic loaded library ...
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0
votes
1
answer
144
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What type of license is protected my source from publishing the compiled product for free? [closed]
I am working on a commercial iOS application and recently I have made my mind to make it open source If I can find a proper license which fits my needs.
This application is an end-product application, ...
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2
votes
1
answer
270
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What is the best-practice for commercial vendors who build their offering on top of Open-Source software?
My company is currently developing a commercial software for our clients (it will be offered both under a commercial license for SaaS and also a binary for on-site private network usage). This ...
0
votes
1
answer
181
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GNU General Public License v3.0 Embedded Web Program Question
Say I have a program named X. If I edit X, I have to make the source code of X open source.
If I have another program (say a web application) and I write my own code Y (which is closed source) and I ...
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0
votes
1
answer
97
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QT on windows - limitations, restrictions, commercial products
I've downloaded the qt online installer from: https://www.qt.io/download-open-source to develop on Windows.
My question is: as long as we respect LGPL are we forced to buy a commercial license (for ...
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13
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1
answer
3k
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MariaDB: How can the license being held by a foundation forbid Oracle from buying MariaDB?
I was looking though :
Learning MySQL and MariaDB
[ Russell J.T. Dyer / O’Reilly / 2015 ]
where I came across a licensing Issue.
It says [ Preface Section ] :
"The software license, though, is ...
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4
votes
1
answer
101
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License GPLv3 scenario for a plugin A for Blender 3D and software B that communicates with plugin A. What is the license for software B?
I would like to create a plugin, let's call it 'A' for Blender 3D and a software let's call it 'B' that communicates with plugin A through the network.
I know that Blender 3D has GPL license for the ...
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1
vote
1
answer
76
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Launching an application from another application
I have a GUI program that launches at start-up on a Linux machine. And this GUI can launch other applications like Spotify. I want to put this machine as a car's infotainment system of a vehicle that ...
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1
vote
0
answers
149
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Confusion about Licenses
I have confusion about how the GNU open source licenses and QT commercial licenses.
In the QT's pricing page it says:
Can I distribute Qt binaries in conjunction with my desktop or mobile application?...
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3
votes
1
answer
270
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Does LGPLv3 Tivoization apply to non "User Products"?
LGPLv3 section 4e:
Provide Installation Information, but only if you would otherwise be required to provide such information under section 6 of the GNU GPL, and only to the extent that such ...
2
votes
1
answer
74
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Can GPLv3 contributions to a separate project be used without attribution?
I recently forked a relatively new GPLv3 project on GitHub, as it had seemingly been abandoned not long after its creator had published it, and I wanted to make some improvements, as it was in a ...
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1
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0
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71
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Can I develop a video game or mod related to 3rd party artwork?
I'm developing a video game with many easter eggs and references to science, technologies, philosophy, and some movies, tv series, animated series, video games, franchises of fictional universes, ...
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1
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Can i copy MIT licensed code and then publish it as my own?
i have a question.
Can i copy code (500 lines) from an open source python pip library under MIT license, modify the code and add my (100 lines) and then publish it as not open source and charge people ...
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0
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347
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FFmpeg & AAC licenses & patents
I checked every AAC- and FFmpeg-related question on the entire StackExchange and it's not yet clear to me.
In my project, I provide some audio-only content, encoded in AAC, to the end users.
Some ...
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1
vote
2
answers
3k
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PyQt5 Commercial License
Suppose I do the following:
I code out a very small python program (like no more than five hundred lines of code): I download relevant packages about PyQt5, opencv, numpy, math and matplotlib at ...
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-1
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1
answer
4k
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Can I use Apache 2.0 for closed source product?
I have a Product "A" which is a closed source, i.e. the repository is private and wont want to make it as a public repository.
Product "A" can also use/dynamically link Library &...
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2
votes
1
answer
68
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Copy license terms from other product?
This might not be a very "open source" question, but I thought I might find in this forum the right people for the question.
For a mortal human being creating a PDF with the license terms ...
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8
votes
2
answers
1k
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Open source licenses and royalties
Many projects, e.g. GitLab, BitWarden, EasyRedmine, use open source software licenses. Their code is publicly available, and the services can be self-hosted.
Of course they can charge users for ...
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0
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1
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71
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Should I provide my source code if I use GPL source code combined into my subscription service code?
I've looked at other topics related to this question, but mine is quite different from others so I'm not sure about the answer.
Let's say I am building a website that will provide SAAS for users. In ...
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6
votes
2
answers
2k
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How is 'commercial use' of software defined?
Licenses often distinguish between commercial use and non-commercial use. I found different sources discussing this topic:
What is commercial and non-commercial?
What Does Commercial Software Mean?
...
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0
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0
answers
49
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Why can't I distribute my application und a license of my choice when I accept contributions? [duplicate]
I have an app that I want to make open source, as in the literal definition of the code being public. Github says that if you don't apply a license, it's copyrighted by default. I want that, to be the ...
user26151
0
votes
1
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56
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How to respect user freedom when selling consumer software without services?
By "consumer software", I mean stand-alone software that an end-user would directly download and use on a desktop or phone. No business or corporation involved. I have read these questions ...
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votes
1
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2k
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Is using SheetJS free for commercial use?
I downloaded a version of SheetJS here https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/dist/xlsx.full.min.js
It's basically a version of xlsx that allows me to export an excel document and allows me to manipulate data ...
1
vote
0
answers
44
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How does software licensing works for Docker Images on commercial usage? [duplicate]
I want to develop and share an application for commercial usage (closed source only). This application only "lives" inside a Docker Image. This Docker Image is based an own Dockerfile which ...
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3
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Preventing commercial exploitation of small changes that require a lot of work
At my previous job I was responsible for building and maintaining a library in their ecosystem. The project is mature in the sense that no major new features are being implemented. It is still ...
user25536
2
votes
1
answer
249
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Can I sell an Electron application that use a library under Eclipse Public License 1.0 without disclosing the source code of the entire app?
I want to sell an Electron desktop application that uses a JS library under the Eclipse Public License 1.0 license. One of the conditions is to "disclose source".
It's not totally clear to ...
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votes
1
answer
75
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Can I impose the requirement of a paid license if and only if my software is offered as a service?
I'm getting ready to open source a project that facilitates the deployment, maintenance, and orchestration of data platforms on just about any architecture (locally, on any cloud of your choosing, on ...
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2
votes
1
answer
144
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Package that includes a library file with non-commercial license
We are trying to use a package released by a commercial entity for use with one of their reporting software. I think it was closed source at one point then they converted it to a "Community" ...
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1
vote
0
answers
133
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Dual license GPL/non-commercial + commercial SDK license
Looking to release an open-source SDK, all of which uses novel code OR dependencies that are MIT/Apache.
For the business model, I would like to sell commercial-use licenses for use with the SDK, ...
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3
votes
2
answers
655
views
Is GPL copyleft triggered by distribution alone?
Would distributing a commercial closed source application along with a GPLd standalone binary, which the closed source application calls trigger the requirement to license whole app under GPL? (For ...
- 125
1
vote
1
answer
75
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Dual Licensing for Artistic Software
Let's say I'd like to develop an end-user application with which you can create some kind of artistic work (say presentations or drawings). As a fan of the open source idea, I'd like to open-source ...
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17
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4
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How can I deal with this (predatory?) scenario?
This question is related, but it is different to this one: How can I forbid shady resale practices?
Scenario:
Suppose that a small team or startup (company A), develops a good software project, which ...
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2
votes
1
answer
110
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Is the Ender 3 V2 licensed under the same license as the original?
Somewhere in 2018, it was a big deal when Chinese company Creality made their Ender 3 printer 'truly open source', as acknowledged by the Open Source HardWare Association. See for example this YouTube ...
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1
answer
71
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Metaflac.exe and flac.exe license with commercial software
With this zip file, it contains both the metaflac.exe and flac.exe that I would like to bundle with software that I intend to sell.
The license is here. https://xiph.org/flac/license.html
I'm unclear ...
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2
votes
1
answer
166
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Can I use the output of a free for personal use software that requires a license for commercial use in an art project [closed]
As the title says, can I use the output, a jpeg image, of a software which states it can be downloaded free of charge for academic, government, nonprofit, and personal use, but which requires a ...
35
votes
8
answers
7k
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Under copyleft, why distinguish between "free as in free speech" and "free as in free beer"?
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around why copyleft libre software advocates say they advocate for "free as in free speech" software, rather than monetarily free software, when it seems ...
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1
answer
306
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Company policy says no code under license requiring sharing source can be used. Stack Overflow is CC-BY-SA. Does this mean we can't use SO at work?
Training at work regarding software licensing instructed us that we should not use code from any project using a license that requires sharing modifications such as the GPL. We can use Linux as an OS ...
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votes
3
answers
7k
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Can I relicense an abandoned GPL project if the copyright owners are no longer responsive?
Suppose I want to use GPL-copyrighted software in a closed-source project. With actively maintained projects I can contact the copyright holders to see if I can work out an agreement with them. But ...
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1
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0
answers
47
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clarify R licenses: machine learning models, developed with R in Azure, possible for commercial use?
i want to estimate machine learning models with R and i need to use it in a production environment, i'll work with Azure Datascience Virtual Machine or Azure Machine Learning.
If i use , for ex., ...
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