Questions tagged [copyright]
For questions about the copyrighting process and principles. Questions solely pertaining to general copyright are off topic.
360 questions
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Where to get music for testing my program?
I need music files I can use for testing my program that I can put in my git repo.
Can I copy the test music files from other open source projects? Do I have to attribute them and if so how?
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3
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1
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196
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A small Go library under GPLv2, rewrite it under modified BSD
Go is using a modified BSD license. I would like to use the same license for some projects, most parts / libraries will be published under an open source license, but clients do demand some of the ...
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823
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What entities are eligible to copyright a project?
Me and my friend want to make business on customization of our open source project. We have NOT yet registered the project trademark NOR started a company.
Сan we write in Copyright 2019 [name of ...
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3
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205
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Extending GPL project with Paid license features
I found some GPL v3 licensed open source projects that also have paid enterprise license versions with more useful features.
I only need 10% of the features available in the (expensive) enterprise ...
4
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853
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Distributing the Copyright Notices of Libraries with Binary Software
I'm working on a piece of open source software that's distributed as a binary in a Docker container. Thus, most of the users of the software not only do not interact with the source, they do not even ...
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330
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Copyright notice in deployed smart contracts
This sounds like a corner case for including copyright notices when distributing copies of a software under MIT and other permissive licenses. In fact, deploying a smart contract on the blockchain ...
- 129
4
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123
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Revert copyleft license without consent of all copyright holders
Let's say that Alice has started a project under a permissive license, e. g. MIT. Then Bob forked it and added some features. Now the project has two copyright holders, Alice and Bob. Then Bob decided ...
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4
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587
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Rights of deep learning output trained on CC-BY-ND or CC-BY-NC images
We can use GANs to generate original images, but if I train my GAN using CC-BY-ND am I creating a derivative work? If I train with CC-BY-NC images (or even copyrighted images), do I have rights to use ...
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Who is the copyright holder when GPLv2 project API is used?
I've read a lot of articles and still can't find the answer to the following question.
There is a project that uses GNU General Public License version 2 license, developed by CompanyX. We (...
11
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1
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425
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Accidently commited plagiarism, what now?
I maintain an open-source project.
Somebody made a pull-request two days ago, and I accepted it.
Now I realized, that a large portion of the pull-request is just a copy-pasted from another project (...
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7
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815
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Who owns the rights to a logo contributed to an open-source project?
I recently designed a logo for an MIT-licensed open-source project.
That same open-source project has now launched a commercial offering under the same name (just using a .com instead of .org) domain,...
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1k
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How do I detect an AGPL violation?
For client side code, even if it is obfuscated or is just a binary, I can imagine there might be ways of doing this, but if I have some server-side AGPL licensed code, how am I supposed to know that ...
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405
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Can I use API exposed in an open source project (MIT License) in a commercial software?
I wanted to use an api that is exposed in an open source project under MIT License.There's no restrictions mentioned for the use of api anywhere in the License neither it says that we can use the api ...
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887
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Copyright of MIT licenced libraries usage within GPL licensed code
My software is completely written in python and has the following architecture of down cascaded dependencies. I plan to share my whole source code (FileA, FileB, FileC) next time in GitHub:
FileA: ...
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154
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Does a central copyright and license notice cover all the files in a software program?
Some open-source programs have a single copyright and license notice in the README file, while others put a notice in each file in the program.
I prefer the first practice because it makes the code ...
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Can someone explain the basic requirements of Open Source Qt LGPL to a beginner?
I’m a automotive electronic and electrical engineer with little to no software experience.
I need to hire a developer to develop Windows GUI application that is used to configure and program a ...
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Is there a good license for a libertarian programmer who's against intellectual property?
I know, I know, you're probably thinking CC0 or WTFPL or something along those lines. But the thing is, the way I see it, people have a right to redistribute anything, even if the author doesn't want ...
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225
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How to properly display the Copyright information in the User Interface or product documentation?
In order to fulfill license obligations (in some cases) one must display the copyright information (when not delivering source code).
Should one display (in GUI or IFU) the copyright information of ...
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4
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139
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Do project owners have to comply with their software's license? [duplicate]
Say that I create an open source project with a license X, that grants user the capacity to edit and distribute my code, but under the same license.
Do I, as the owner and copyright holder, have to ...
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Copyright notice in the file header (Apache v2 license)
Recently, about 50 top contributors (including myself) decided to fork Swagger Codegen to maintain a community-driven version called "OpenAPI Generator" (https://github.com/OpenAPITools/openapi-...
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765
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Is it correct in general to have both MIT and Apache license for the same project
I am using the javascript library Datejs in my project, the library states in their website that the code is released under the MIT Licence but the code published on their GitHub account is published ...
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381
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How should I license my project if it can install GPL-based plugins?
I'm developing a software which has two parts, kernel and plugins, their code are completely separated. Here's the question:
Some of the plugins should be GPL based, as they invoked GPL code.
The ...
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91
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Whether to open source a specific project
As the owner of a company that has a Web application, I would like to make that code freely available for people to contribute code to.
There are several places where this is a specific application, ...
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How to use software published under MIT without copyright notice?
MIT License says:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
However, a few repositories do not have any ...
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179
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Can one get all copyrights on derivative software if one add enough new code?
According to german law, can one get all copyrights on software derivative if one added enough new code?
if yes, how is the "percentage of new code" measured?
if yes, are there such paragraphs in ...
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Can i use a GPLv2 module in my commercial application?
I am developing a commercial wordpress plugin. There is a form module that i have to develop however, i found one already built under GPL2 here
https://github.com/weDevsOfficial/weforms
All other ...
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4
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3k
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Declaring copyright anonymously
I want to release some software anonymously.
My first idea was to release it to the public domain, but I have found out that it is not a safe practice due to incompatibilities with the legislation of ...
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can I use CC BY-SA 3.0 media (pictures) in a software partly licensed under a non-derivative license?
I am working on software that contains graphics I didn't make, that are licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Since the software contains other parts I didn't make, I want to put it under two different ...
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Can I use my username in copyright?
I am releasing a program under the GNU GPL v3.0. I need to include a copyright notice.
Is it ok to use my username in the copyright notice as I don't want to use my real name?
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842
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Can a GitHub Organization assert copyright?
I started an OSS project with a fellow coding enthusiast in 2014 (that has since pretty much left the project, although as far as I can tell he's still following everything that's going on). Since the ...
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How to handle the copyright notice of a BSD 3-clause licence when modifying it
If I take some BSD 3-claused code and modify it, do I then have the right to place my own copyright under the original author's copyright notice?
I.e.
BSD 3-Clause License
Copyright (c) 2018, ...
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290
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How accept contributions from people who don't know what a Pull Request is?
Someone sent me [ a translation to a new language ] of the open source software I'm developing. He attached the translation messages file to a private message in the discussion forum I've setup for ...
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166
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Using a person's name for an open source project
I'm looking for a name to give my open-source and non-profit project that will best represent its purpose. Presently, the ideal name for the project would be the name of a certain individual (Ken ...
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475
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Commercial print (shirt) of GitHub repository
GitHub offers a list of 33 licenses:
Academic Free License v3.0 afl-3.0
Apache license 2.0 apache-2.0
Artistic license 2.0 artistic-2.0
Boost Software License 1.0 bs1-1.0
BSD 2-clause "Simplified" ...
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119
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Can I commercially use a fixed source code distributed under GPL?
There is this source code on GitHub (a PHP class, around 200 lines of code) distributed under GPL license which has some bugs and is not useful to me unless those bugs are fixed. If I fix those bugs, ...
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Change text of original author
I am thinking about using this library: https://github.com/rxi/classic/blob/master/classic.lua
and I have a question regarding the first few lines:
--
-- classic
--
-- Copyright (c) 2014, rxi
--
-- ...
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7
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430
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Modifying file without copyright under Apache 2.0
I'd like to use a modified version of a certain file from an open source project that is licensed under the Apache 2.0.
The file itself doesn't contain copyright notice neither the project does.
Now, ...
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3
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328
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What license is the text of "Unlicense" licensed under?
If I want to license my software under the term of Unlicense, I'm supposed to include its text in a file and place the file in the repository alongside my project. When I distribute the project, I'm ...
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876
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How do you copyright/license software based on MIT-licensed open source code?
I am a former developer that codes in my spare time for fun and to maintain some level knowledge in the subject. So I found an interesting proof of concept online. I saw the potential to modify it and ...
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143
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Quoting your own content (in your own work, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0) to avoid licensing it
Bob writes an article and licenses it under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Certain laws can permit Bob to include someone else’s content in his article, even if this content isn’t compatibly licensed. For example, ...
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80
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Should I put PATENTS file to build folder
There is an editor Draft.js. It's licensed under the BSD-style License. Every file in the source code has a copyright notice. Here is a piece of that notice:
* This source code is licensed under the ...
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Is there an existing license that is copy-left by default, but allows use in proprietary software through case-by-case negotiation?
I'm looking for a license which is designed such that anyone can use my code so long as the license they release it under is copy-left. However, I'd also like to be able to license my code out for ...
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991
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Does reading code and re-implementing the logic, and releasing under your name count as a licensing violation of MIT?
I'm not clear on what counts as a "copy" in the case of code.
If I read your code, that was MIT licensed, implement a similar logic on my own and use no code fragments from the original author, does ...
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197
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Avoiding copycats when open sourcing website
I run a free website that lets users pull data out of a database that I maintain. Sometimes users make suggestions as to improvements to existing reports or new reports they would like to see. While ...
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Are you allowed to use open source content as your own?
Can you simply just take open-souce content and use it as your own?
I have seen this a lot of times.
For example, this tutorial http://slashtutorial.com/rust/ was taken from https://github.com/...
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485
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DMCA Takedown Notice received for distributing software licensed under Apache 2.0
A browser plugin was removed from one of the app stores last year as it had stopped working, and the author was no longer maintaining it in favor of their standalone desktop apps. I preferred using ...
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924
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Can I remove some copyright holders from headers and replace them by a generic "and contributors"?
The project I'm involved in currently has headers of the following form:
The X Development Team
Organization A - Organization B - Organization C - Copyright 1999-2018
This file is distributed under ...
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48
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How to release small part of my code as an opensource plugin to allow free reuse (including by myself at my work)
I am working with Unity3D on a commercial project, and have found that some vital part of working with social accounts is not implemented, namely - authorized API calls. I am almost done implementing ...
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494
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Is it possible to transfer an MIT license?
Let's say that I have an MIT license on some open source software I created. I understand that with an MIT license, I need to state the license information in certain points of a code. I was wondering ...
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What's the usual procedure when using MIT or BSD-2-Clause licensed source code with something like `<script src="…`, `require(…` or `import …`?
This is not a legal question. It might touch the legal aspects around Open Source licenses but I need general help understanding how they work and what the usual procedure is.
Part 1 of my question: ...
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