Skip to main content

Questions tagged [multi-licensing]

Works can be released under two (or more) licenses, which may or may not be compatible, giving recipients the choice of which terms they will abide by

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
92 votes
2 answers
21k views

Why is CC BY-SA discouraged for code?

Everybody knows that you shouldn't use a CC BY-SA license on your code. Even the Creative Commons folk recommend against it. What I don't know or understand is why. I can't seem to find any ...
RubberDuck's user avatar
  • 5,546
40 votes
3 answers
1k views

Can I "Override" a licensing policy?

On many sites, especially Stack Overflow, I can't help but notice such amazing code snippets. However, they come with a "catch" designed by the author. With user contributions being licensed with the ...
Zizouz212's user avatar
  • 6,590
26 votes
1 answer
783 views

Do Stack Exchange’s ToS mean that the user-generated content is double-licensed to them?

In the ToS of Stack Exchange sites, under the section Subscriber Content, the first sentence states that my submitted content is licensed (to Stack Exchange) under CC BY-SA 3.0: You agree that all ...
unor's user avatar
  • 5,700
21 votes
2 answers
395 views

Will a dual license lock me in to a provider?

I want to use open source software for my business, and it is dual licensed. If I choose the paid license which provides support for any changes we require, will this mean that we are unable to change ...
trichoplax is on Codidact now's user avatar
18 votes
5 answers
2k views

May someone else apply a license to CC0 material?

Alice licensed her work under CC0 1.0. May Bob take Alice’s work and publish it under another Creative Commons license (e.g., CC BY-SA)? If yes, may Bob publish it under his own name (i.e., not ...
unor's user avatar
  • 5,700
15 votes
4 answers
222 views

What is the most concise unambiguous way to represent dual licensing of a work?

I publish photos under multiple Creative Commons licenses and often want to indicate the licensing in a short caption or comment on the photo online or in print. If one of them is dual licensed, how ...
Sparr's user avatar
  • 1,109
15 votes
3 answers
269 views

Can paid-for Open Sourcing be a viable model for a freelancer?

Open sourcing doesn't necessarily mean that you give away your source code for free. I am wondering about the business model where your code is made public, free for personal/hobby use, but with a ...
Yves Daoust's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
2k views

As owner of GPL library, can I break the licensing terms?

As far as I understand, choosing GPL licence for library does not permits use of it in proprietary programs as opposed to LGPL. So releasing my library (or code classes), I'm forcing people to use ...
kenorb's user avatar
  • 1,101
11 votes
3 answers
3k views

What is the meaning of two licenses in a maven pom?

Maven allows several licenses in its license block e.g. <licenses> <license> <name>GPL-3.0</name> </license> <license> <name> Beerware</...
openCage's user avatar
  • 603
11 votes
3 answers
849 views

Can I apply one license to specific users and another to others?

Suppose I am a developer. I am developing a piece of software. I decide I want to make this code open source. But... I only want developers (or people that will be using the code in other projects) to ...
Trevor Clarke's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
2k views

Is it possible to restrict GNU GPLv3 to non-commercial use only?

I've noticed that the jQuery plugin "Fancybox" has a peculiar licensing note in its header: // Licensed GPLv3 for open source use // or fancyBox Commercial License for commercial use // // http://...
Alexander Rechsteiner's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
2k views

License to use for smaller GitHub repos

I frequently create programs to process my local files in some fashion. About half of them are Bash shell scripts under 100 lines, others may be longer, include multiple files, or even be in other ...
user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
1k views

Does reimplementing GPLv2 code in another language create a derivative work that also falls under the GPL?

I am now working with some ~2005 C CLI code, licensed as GPLv2-only. I hope to do the following things: Port the code to a more recent environment (e.g. port to Ubuntu 22.04) (I only do this to try ...
ZP-ZPanda's user avatar
  • 111
9 votes
2 answers
2k views

Can software be both MIT licensed and in the public domain?

docopt.rs is dual-licensed under the MIT and Unlicense. How can the software be both copyrighted and in the public domain? Is this an example of invalid licensing?
user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
800 views

Does it make sense to license my content under a more restrictive license if it's licensed CC-BY-SA?

Let's say that I make a post on a Stack Exchange site. That content is owned by me, but I gave the company a perpetual and irrevocable license under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0. As ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
  • 1,792
9 votes
4 answers
1k views

If something is licensed to me under two (Open Source) licences, can I redistribute under only one?

I have modified a particular file (A LaTeX Beamer Template) The readme says: The code of the package is dual-license. This means that you can decide which license you wish to use when using the ...
Frames Catherine White's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
272 views

Licensing Community Wiki Posts at Stack Exchange

A while back, I ask this question: Can I Override a licensing Policy? I determined that instead of stating a license on a profile page, it dual-licenses the content posted by that user, instead of ...
Zizouz212's user avatar
  • 6,590
8 votes
1 answer
689 views

Possibility of non-commercial ‘open-source’ and attribution based licence

I am currently planning to launch an alpha version of the software as a representative of an unregistered company. We (currently I'm the only person on the team) do not have any patents and are not ...
Prasad Raghavendra's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
392 views

Dual license compatibility

Suppose I place work I publish under two licenses. If the two have conflicting attributes which property should be used. Can you specify which properties you want two be applied from the two licenses?...
Trevor Clarke's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
3k views

Combining GPL with non-commercial license

I've been a hobbyist programmer for a long time, and only recently have I been writing code I've thought others might benefit from. Here's my conundrum: I'm a big supporter of the GPL, and I ...
john12tucker's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
232 views

How to license Stack Overflow contributions as permissive as possible? [duplicate]

Important: this related Meta Stack Exchange post. Code you post on Stack Overflow is licensed "cc-by-sa 3.0 with attribution required". Now this may pose problems for people wanting to use my ...
Jeroen's user avatar
  • 233
8 votes
1 answer
238 views

How to Audit licensing of old project?

I manage a project with a very long open source history - Zikula (and https://github.com/zikula/core). Zikula grew out of PHPNuke and PostNuke. Most of the oldest code is long gone, but some legacy ...
craigh's user avatar
  • 183
8 votes
2 answers
720 views

Using GPL-ed library from code with more permissive license (MPL-2)

I'm writing a library and a tool on top of it, and I would like to release both under MPL-2. However, the library has an optional dependency, another library which is released under GPL (not LGPL). I ...
gavv's user avatar
  • 446
8 votes
2 answers
3k views

License header for dual-licensed (AGPL or "non-free") source code

For one of my products I plan to move from a commercial-only to a dual licensed license model: GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) or a "non-free" license. I can imagine two options for the ...
mjn's user avatar
  • 183
7 votes
2 answers
593 views

Is it legal to use code from Microsoft Knowledge Base Article in an open source software?

In an open-source software project, GPL2 or 3, is it legal to use code snippets from Microsoft Knowledge Base articles - the ones that used to be called something like Q1234567, nowadays called just ...
Hrach's user avatar
  • 71
7 votes
2 answers
2k views

Can a company offering a dual-license AGPL/paid commercial product require commercial users to purchase a commercial license?

When I was working through a problem I was having with MinIO, I noticed that in a bug report on Github, one of the project owners made this comment to a bug reporter: Also remember if you are using ...
mngeek206's user avatar
  • 417
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Can I dual license my code under the AGPL and the CPAL? If so, how?

I'm beginning work on a web application at the moment which ideally I'd like to dual license under the terms of the AGPL and the CPAL. This would mean that anyone using the code in their own web ...
Danny M's user avatar
  • 89
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

Dynamically Linking a Proprietary Module to a GPL-Covered Library (C/C++)

Context Suppose I have two projects called: Foo Bar Goal: The Foo compiles to some sort of dynamic linking library such as a windows .dll and links to project Bar dynamically. And some of the ...
Nasir Hossain's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
5k views

Clarification: Dual licensed under the MIT or GPL Version 2 licenses

I've been reading the differences between these two licenses for a few hours now and it is still quite not clear to me how this duality works. As far as I understood, the MIT license basically gives ...
GBeck's user avatar
  • 163
6 votes
0 answers
227 views

What might be the licence for OpenAI model generated code snippets?

I saw an interesting video on computer-generated code snippets. The model has been trained on thousands of open source GitHub repositories. In the video, an AI model produced some small code ...
oleksii's user avatar
  • 161
5 votes
2 answers
836 views

Dual license or relicense when the new license is more permissive?

An organization is considering changing the license of an OSS repo on GitHub. For the purposes of this question, assume that organization has the legal rights to change the license. It is currently ...
kdopen's user avatar
  • 7,037
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

What does the Zstandard dual license mean?

I am looking at the Zstandard library and it says that it is dual licensed, BSD and GPLv2. What does it mean? If I use libraries in a non open source program will the license be GPL or BSD? In the ...
Goozo's user avatar
  • 153
5 votes
2 answers
346 views

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 ...
James P.'s user avatar
  • 375
5 votes
2 answers
257 views

Different OSS license for LaTeX project source and code listings

I am currently writing a technical document with various code listings and diagrams. I would like to release the actual text under the GNU-FDL license, while keeping the code listings under GNU-GPL V3....
Pieter-Jan Cassiman's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

Is license compatibility a partial order?

When we say that some license X is (one-way) compatible with another license Y, I gather that we often intend for compatibility to be transitive; that is, given some other license W which is ...
Corbin's user avatar
  • 373
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

GPL with license exception for iOS?

I'd really like to use the GPL license for my cross-platform mobile app. I want to publish on the iOS AppStore, the terms of which indirectly prohibit the GPL from being used. What's the best way to ...
Tin Man's user avatar
  • 349
5 votes
2 answers
275 views

Licence for open-source code which is part of proprietary code?

I've a proprietary program which is using OOP classes which I want to publish as FOSS (only the classes). Which FOSS compatible license I can choose for the classes which will work with my ...
kenorb's user avatar
  • 1,101
5 votes
1 answer
551 views

Does using an AGPLv3-licensed library prevent me from dual-licensing my own source code?

I wrote some software (a simple command-line utility) and released the source code under the following zlib-style open source license: Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any ...
unixwitch's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
518 views

Is License Zero compatible with other open source licenses like GNU, MIT or BSD licenses for example?

I am currently developing a small open source project and would like to make sure I got the licensing right. I am pretty new to the open source model. I have benefited from it on a personal level for ...
shuri's user avatar
  • 55
4 votes
2 answers
363 views

License similar to GPL, but allowing to incorporate into the commercial version

Continuing this question: I want a license L which is generally like GPL, but allows us to do the following: License our software under both L and a commercial license. Require that every patch (or ...
porton's user avatar
  • 579
4 votes
2 answers
192 views

Do anything with this free beer except generate revenue, for that you'll need to purchase an additional beer license?

Background I'm working on a talk, complete with an accompanying resource pack and website. I've never released anything I believe to be of some actual significant monetary value to anyone else before ...
Luke's user avatar
  • 221
4 votes
2 answers
884 views

Can my thesis LaTeX source files contents be under GPL v3?

I want to release all the LaTeX source files (*.tex), when I publish my thesis. I do not want to just release the PDF. So everybody can build my thesis with a LaTeX compiler from its source code. Can ...
user's user avatar
  • 295
4 votes
2 answers
273 views

Commercial AGPL application

I'm developing an application using iText. iText, unless a commercial license is purchased, forces you to abide by the AGPL. My plan is to sell commercial pre-compiled copies of my software at a small ...
pixlepix's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
104 views

How to license a literate program?

A literate program is a set of of source files each containing a mix of documentation (e.g. as Latex 'code') and code (e.g. as C++ code -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming). From ...
Eric Bruneton's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

Is dual licensing a software that contains gpl programs possible?

I have seen that there is a question about gpl and dual licensing, but I know copyleft can behave different depending on the shape of the software. so here's my question: I have a package of lua ...
KGM's user avatar
  • 197
4 votes
2 answers
276 views

What is the way to handle a project that is a mix of software and non-software items?

Our project is partly software, and partly 3d models and images. To me, the language of the MIT license, which specifically refers to software, doesn't really seem applicable to the parts that aren't ...
kim holder's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
175 views

Licensing under "version X or later"

Is it a GPL-only thing or can I use this formulation with any license, like "MPL 2 or later"? Does it mean that in case versions 1, 2 & 3 of license are available, "version 1 or later" effectively ...
ZeroUnderscoreOu's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
131 views

JPEG comment to convey Copyleft Multi-Licenced Copyright Notice

This question is related to Copyleft Multi-Licenced Copyright Notice. I upload pictures on commons.wikimedia.org and I want to facilitate the reuse but I want derivatives stay "libre". Therefore I ...
oHo's user avatar
  • 175
4 votes
1 answer
159 views

What is the point of dual licensing a library under BSD-3-Clause and GPL?

While reviewing our libraries I stumbled over the zstd implementation (https://github.com/facebook/zstd/blob/dev/README.md). It (and some of its derivatives) is dual licenses under a BSD-3-Clause and ...
Martin Ba's user avatar
  • 571
4 votes
2 answers
388 views

How to license programming assignments permissively, while preventing solutions from being published?

I have created a few practical programming assignments for a bachelor's course in computer science, which I'm quite proud of. I'd love for my work to be used anywhere, and for any future teachers or ...
Bas van den Heuvel's user avatar