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To answer the question in the title ("What is the legal definition of a company/organization?"), that depends on the laws in the concerned countries and may also depend on how the company is exactly structured.
I will assume that the part in country A and the part in country B are legally independent companies that are both subsidiaries of a larger ...
14
AGPL is an OSI approved license. An open source license cannot permit who can use it, as per section 5 of the open source definition:
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
I am not a lawyer, but the terms of the AGPL and the statement mentioned in the question that "The author [sic] has the permission to prohibit a ...
12
It seems to me there are two ways to interpret what you propose. Either
a) you make the software is available to all under AGPLv3, except John Smith, who may not take a copy under any terms, or
b) you make the software is available to all under AGPLv3, with the additional proviso that John Smith is never allowed to use it.
In the case of (a), anyone who isn'...
8
Copyright transfer and licensing are two very different things.
In a copyright transfer, you literally transfer the rights on what you have written to another person or organization. You literally give up your right to have a say in what happens to your work.
With a copyright license, you give someone else the rights to perform some actions that under ...
5
No, there are no open-source licenses that meet your requirements.
An open-source license is not allowed to discriminate in what the software is used for. An open-source license can't forbid commercial usage and by the same token it can't forbid usage in a product aimed at non-consumers.
answered Dec 24 '20 at 18:56
Bart van Ingen Schenau
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5
This is a really tricky scenario, which is why automated license compliance tools can only go so far. Your analysis seems generally correct.
In practice, I would expect that the license of B doesn't just cover B's original source code, but also B's transpiled code (at least if B is distributed in transpiled form). This would neatly sidestep the issue of ...
4
Just because a language and its toolchains are licensed under the GNU GPL does not mean that any software you create with it also needs to be GPL-licensed. The GPL FAQ reads:
Can I use GPL-covered editors such as GNU Emacs to develop nonfree programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools such as GCC to compile them?
Yes, because the copyright on the editors and ...
4
Open source licenses are not allowed to discriminate against fields of endeavor. That means you cannot use an open source license for your code and use that license to prevent competitors from opening shop.
Some things that are possible with various open source licenses are:
The AGPL requires that modified versions must be under the AGPL license and their ...
4
I agree with JNic above. I note your edit regarding the distribution of binaries linked to System Libraries, but I think you are misunderstanding this exception.
The FAQ entry you quote makes it clear that if a library is a System Library, then the mere choice to distribute a copy of said Library along with your work doesn't prevent you from availing ...
4
Do I need to pick a license, if I don't plan to publish the book?
No.
What would be a good license?
A Creative Commons license is appropriate for non-software works. Use their license chooser to choose a CC license.
What happens, if I don't pick a license?
All rights reserved.
What happens, if I want to include non-free songs?
You have to ask for ...
4
The LGPL ensures that the library will always remain under the LGPL. Since you are not the sole copyright holder, you cannot relicense the library under a different license.
However, this does not prevent linking the LGPL-covered library with a proprietary library, which is then sold. It is also permissible to bundle the LGPL library with the proprietary ...
3
If I am the sole copyright holder, I can distribute under any license I wish. Now "AGPL with one exception" is not AGPL obviously. I don't know about AGPL, but the GPL license is protected by copyright, and comes with a license that allows you to copy it unchanged, but does NOT AT ALL allow you to make any changes. Assuming AGPL is the same, you ...
3
You misunderstood the statements from Qt.
Qt 5.15.x is available to both Commercial and Open Source users.
However, after version 6 or 5.16 has been released, only Commercial users will receive further bugfixes on Qt 5.15. If you are an Open Source user and you are inconvenienced by a bug, you must upgrade to the next stable version to get a fix for the bug.
answered Dec 20 '20 at 7:47
Bart van Ingen Schenau
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3
The CC0 is an excellent instrument for making it possible for everyone to use a software. It effectively disclaims all copyright you may have to the fullest degree possible. Thus, if you want anyone to use your code without further restrictions (including without any requirement to attribute you), then CC0 is an excellent choice.
There are some downsides to ...
2
No, that is not possible.
First, the header file and the corresponding implementation are closely related enough that if one is under the LGPL license, then the LGPL requires that the other is also under the LGPL license.
And putting the header file also under a proprietary license is not going to work either if the existing LGPL code needs to be modified to ...
answered Dec 30 '20 at 8:28
Bart van Ingen Schenau
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2
Yes, you can use.
If you are not using it at all, no, but as good practice you should refer your inspirations.
Also, I would like to highlight what you said about copying code, it's a tight line because you are getting inspired by that code. Just take caution about how you write the code, and don't fall in a copyright problem!
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As you are not distributing any copy of a standard library, there are no licensing details for the standard library that you can include, as you can't know which implementation your users will use and whatever you state would likely be incorrect for some users.
This would change when you start to distribute binaries, because then you know which ...
2
(I am not a lawyer and therefore this is not "legal advice")
If you really received the program under the terms of the AGPL v3, then look at section 7, third-to-last paragraph:
All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part ...
2
Here's one specific example: in corporate environments where a company has in-house software that they want to keep proprietary, it would be a disaster if someone uses an external library in a way that legally requires the company to reveal the source code of its in-house software. When using an external library that has a copyleft license, if the library ...
2
You do not have the rights to ... redistribute (even for free) the template
The right to copy the software is one of the four freedoms of free software, so that template is non-free. Moreover, the licence is explicit that you may not sublicense the template.
As regards using the template in your website, this seems to be permissible, provided that (as you ...
2
Is it GPL compliant to distribute any non-GPL, closed-source linked library, which falls under the system library exception, with GPL code?
A library distributed with the program does not fall under the system library exception.
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The key insight is probably that a company counts as a person, legally.
When you (personally) copy a GPL'd program from one of your own computers to another, you don't need to give yourself source. You're not distributing the program each time you run cp.
If you're running doing that copy as part of employment, you're doing it as part of the company. Legally,...
1
When you copy files or functions with a Boost license into your own project, there are a number of things you must do
Each copied function or file must have a comment with the original copyright notice and a statement which license applies. If you copied an entire file, those things should already be present. If you create an entire file with only functions ...
1
The owner of the complete source code is not limited to the list of official versions of any license. It is possible to write the license in the way "All terms of the known GPL license apply for everyone except John Smith". Changes are not permitted in the licenses but should be possible to reference them in any context.
However such licenses are ...
1
The answer is complicated.
The following only applies to Java SE.
From Java 9 onwards, most Java distros do not come in a JRE only form.
However, there is no distinction between JRE and JDK in what the licenses permit.
There are many different providers of Java. Each one (in theory) can have different license terms. However we can simplify this to:
...
1
TLDR; Get your Java runtime from AdoptOpenJDK. It basically uses the same sources as the Oracle JDK and is licensed as GPLv2 with classpath exception.
I understand this must all seem quite confusing.
As of January 2019 you will need a license for commercial use of the Oracle JRE (what was known as the "original" Sun JRE) from Oracle. I'm not a ...
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