Questions tagged [intellectual-property]
Intellectual Property is a superset of copyright, and also includes patents, trademarks and trade secrets.
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What happens if stolen software is published as Open Source?
This is not a real world issue, at least for me. It is more about a thought experiment from a talk that I once had with a friend:
Let's say that Acme develops closed source software for their own ...
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Does the owner of the github repository own the copyright to the code?
Say I'm the only one uploading code to someone's private repository, do they own the copyright to the code? Or do I own the copyright to the code since I wrote it?
Would adding a license stating ...
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Can I publish a GPL source I'm being paid for to develop?
For a popular program licensed under GPL3, a system of plugins exists. The program and the plugins are closely interoperable and exchange large structures of data, so the plugins will necessarily be ...
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Are there any other applications of Open Source other than on software/code?
Are there any other applications of Open Source other than on software/code?
I guess you could apply the same idea to any other intellectual property (creations of the mind/intellect). But are there ...
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Can Commons Clause be used along with AGPL?
This article implies that Commons Clause and AGPL could be compatible, while FSF seems to completely disagree with that.
Can Commons Clause be applied on a AGPL project?
Some have misconstrued that ...
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Who owns the intellectual property?
In many open source projects, there are normally many contributors. Ownership of the code is generally clarified during the process of creating the contributor agreements.
However, who owns the ...
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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
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Are there open source hardware licenses that require publishing modified sources when a physical product is distributed?
According to this answer (correct me if I'm wrong), copyleft software licenses don't do much when applied to hardware. Unlike software which is protected by copyright in any form, HDL/CAD hardware is ...
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Under what conditions can someone dual licence existing works?
When software is diffused under an open-source licence I imagine that a project becomes the "intellectual property" of the community.
However, I'm not clear about this answer in that an author agrees ...
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Libre Office and proprietary Microsoft file formats
Libre Office can open proprietary Microsoft file formats (although some features are unsupported). But how was it able to achieve this? Did they reverse engineer these formats from binaries?
In this ...
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Can I mix GPL with proprietary if it's a GPL plugin?
I am writing some proprietary library, at least for the time being it is proprietary, until I can get enough money to hire a lawyer to properly unwrap this (as I want to opensource, but keep a way to ...
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Do Open Source/Free Software projects require submitters to submit proof of authorization to contribute?
Almost all paid programmers in North America (and probably the whole world?) have signed an agreement with their employer which assigns all inventions, copyright, patents, and intellectual property ...
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Does using libraries under LGPL in my product limit my choice on how to license it?
I am developing a product that links to a number of LGPL (or compatible) licensed libraries.
The product itself is a creator tool for intellectual property work of its users. The LGPL libraries are ...
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Using output of a CC BY-NC AI algorithm in a commercial product?
If I use nvidia's stylegan, which is CC BY-NC, to generate images that then will be part of a dataset used as input of my own ML algorithm, do I infringe the stylegan license if I make a remuneration ...
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Is it legal to publish an open source adapter to a closed source SDK?
OSIsoft, LLC publishes an SDK with their PI System, to which I wrote a python adapter. At this point it is for internal use in our company only, but I think it is potentially useful to other users of ...
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Can I sever proprietary code from a codebase that was published containing CC BY-SA 4.0 code?
If I copied some code from Stackoverflow early on in the development process, forgot to take it out, and published the finished website containing the code from Stackoverflow, is my website no longer ...
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How can I handle minors as contributors?
Ok, firstly, to clarify when I say minor, I mean someone under the age of majority in the US. In this case his father reached out to me regarding a sort of mentor/apprenticeship, so I know I have his ...
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How does GPL work for articles on a website?
Suppose I own a website and 3 people are writing articles on the site including myself. My question is whether I can use a GPL license for the articles I write?
What happens if I write an article and ...
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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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Can I use CC BY-NC software for machine learning and analysis purposes?
I have a task at work which requires me to build AI that can do general game playing. Contemplating this task, I have found several games that I would like to use in doing training and analysis to ...
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Software becoming open source
First of all I would like to apologize for my post here. However, I don't know where else to ask these questions.
For some of my projects, I use the SourceMonitor software from Campwood LLC. The ...
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Why Linus Torvalds and The Linux Foundation should not sue distributions for trademark infringment?
If we go to the Ubuntu website, the first reference to Linux is mid-way through the page, as can be seen in this screenshot:
Here in "More than Linux", the word "Linux" is written ...
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copyrights when learning from licensed code and then applying that knowledge to write your own code
When learning from different sources, some of which license their code, is re-applying those techniques and/or knowledge in my own projects considered copyright infringement
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Can I use and distrubute code posted on JSFiddle
I'd like to use code posted on JSFiddle in a project but do I have permission to do so?
I read the terms of service
but they do not mention anything about licensing the code they host. Instead its ...
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Is it legal to create an open source hardware based on an open source driver but closed source software?
Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions® has published an open source driver for their ES58X products. Based on this published code, I want to create an open-source hardware which is ...
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Do I need a license to design IP cores with AXI interfaces?
Many IP cores especially from Xilinx have an AXI interface from ARM.
The AXI interface standard is free for download (after registration), but I don't think it's free for implementation. So I assume ...
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Why don't we have a full-fledged alternative for the Android OS?
Why can't we have a mobile operating system and applciation store that is independent of any country's current political views? It would be an alternative of Google's Android OS. Or if it exists, why ...
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What widely available software license is appropriate if I want to freely distribute but keep my own right to sell?
Edit: This was originally posted in law.stackexchange and was moved here with no input from me. I'm well aware that most Open Source advocates argue against any license that restricts others from ...
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Mixing GPL v3 and Proprietary library
My application has two parts GUI and a backend algorithm module. I have used a library under GPLv3 to write my GUI. In the GUI we can create a workflow of different digital signal processing units so ...
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Can I dual license my software that is on Github with a GPLv3 license?
To my understanding, as the maker of the software, I have the right to dual licensing the software as I wish, be it both an open source license and a proprietary closed license at the same time.
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Validity of agreement to Copyright/CLA via Pull Request merging with agreement text
I have contributed heavily to a open-source github repository and they are licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license (Which isn't really an open-source license). Each of my contributions was merged ...
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If authors of open source software can be held liable for (accidentally) infringing (vaguely worded) software patents, why add one's name to it?
If person A writes software and says "I wrote it and this is my name", she can potentially be sued by a patent troll who says "I invented the program statement and the variable".
If person A writes ...
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Licensing a derivative work from a project
I'm going to write a C library that contains the major and most useful functions from Apache Commons IO's Java package. I will rewrite in C a lot of functions contained in Apache Commons. What do I ...
user6315
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Open Source - With Intellectual property
Recently I have been to open-source stuff and most of the time I license my projects under MIT License.
While open-sourcing projects, how do I "exclude" certain files and assets like "...
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I want to build a new ISO based on official Ubuntu 18.04 ISO, plus some propietary software. What do I have to open-source to comply with GPL2?
What if I do not own the proprietary software but I have been given permission to distribute it (will being able to open-source the build automation help? This would mean only someone with the correct ...
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Plagiarism? What are the requirements to Modeling/adapting published research for software development? [closed]
I would like to create a suite of software tools (for commercial use) to be used by medical professionals in their daily practice. This will require that I utilize information published in medical ...
user7163
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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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How ethical and legal is it to develop proprietary software? [closed]
I am a freelancer and recently, built software for an organization. Our deal was for me to develop and submit software at whole. Hence, it is a proprietary software owned by that organization.
I've ...
