Questions tagged [licensing]
For questions about permission and terms to use intellectual property.
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What stops stolen software from offering a valid license?
A common pattern in software distribution is to have an installer program that pops up and offers the user a license to the software, and prompts the user to accept it. This End User License Agreement ...
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Would a user of the Stack Exchange API be liable for re-publishing copyright infringing data?
Data obtained from the Stack Exchange API is cc-wiki licensed.
This license explicitly encourages the user of the API to copy, redistribute, remix and transform the data obtained from the API for any ...
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Faked GPL license
Lots of software is licensed under the GPL license. It is very well known and well understood. Like most legal documents the license is itself copyrighted, and while the license can be freely copied ...
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Short Weak Copyleft Software License [migrated]
Is there a short weak (or strong) copyleft license?
I like the GPL v3. The way that all its different sections interlock is quite poetic. However, this beauty comes at the cost of it being near ...
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Driver’s License loss [closed]
My bank kept my TX driver’s license by accident. Before I had a chance to pick it up, they threw it away. Their excuse was that they didn’t think I was coming back to pick it up.
I am a customer of ...
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Is Zero-Clause BSD legally binding?
Unilateral promises themselves are not legally binding, and donations do not constitute a valid contract, as these lack consideration (or "causa," a related concept in civil law). It's also ...
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How to legally sell installation of Windows 7 as a service?
I want to start a business. I will legally buy OEM keys for Windows 7 and then install them on machines and sell that as a service. Do I need some kind of license for that?
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What's the most similar license to CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-SA but for source code?
The Creative Commons Foundation recommends against using the Creative Commons (CC) licenses for software. What's the most similar license to CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-SA but for source code? To avoid ...
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CPU-Socket based licensing with regard to combo CPUs
The Enterprise Edition of MySQL database server has a subscription-based license that charges users based on the number of active CPU sockets a user has in posession. However, M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra ...
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How does the law decide who a computer is?
Is there any established logic for deciding who (software author, computer owner, local user, person who sent a remote command, etc.) is responsible for the actions of a computer?
Say that 1000 copies ...
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Can a software license be conditional on the actions of others?
I recently had an idea for a "threshold conditional" software license that works like this:
Any person/entity can purchase a license and gain the unconditional right to use the software any ...
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Is it legal for two or more users to use a Microsoft Windows computer at the same time?
I happened across a video called 7 Users on 1 PC! - but is it legal? that is about an older product that allowed a computer with Windows XP or Windows server to be used by 7 different users at once ...
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Why are the consequences of exploiting the "Unlimited" clauses in product offers?
There's a software application template and in its license (that is valid "forever"), they state that with the most advanced plan there's an "unlimited" amount of repository users ...
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What does "commercial use" mean?
In the legal arena, commercial use (for writers) refers to the use of images in advertising (including book covers). However, what does "commercial" mean when used by Creative Commons, ...
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Is a third party allowed to develop a visually exact copy of a formerly MIT licensed software?
My team at a non profit organization designed and developed a niche software product starting 2012. It was licensed under the MIT license until January 2022. Thereafter the license changed to a ...
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Why is disclosing that you offer no warranties so prevalent in documents?
I was signing an NDA and noticed that there was a clause on the owner offering no warranty relating to the document. I never particularly understood this. It is often prevalent in copyleft licenses ...
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Can a company that releases code as GPL, use it privately?
If a company has a Github repo under GPL license, can they, as the owners of the original code, distribute closed-source copies of it, i.e do they have a different right over the code ?
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Is Wikipedia in violation of GNU Free Documentation License?
Consider this article. The main photo on the right ("A female African bush elephant in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania") is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2. ...
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Can I use a Spanish word in my software license?
This License is a libre and copyleft license for software, specifically designed ...
Can I use the Spanish world "libre" in the preamble and following legal document? "Libre" ...
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Would it be legal to avoid Unity (Game Engine) licensing by having the end-user build the project
Is it legal (assuming US) if instead of paying for a proprietary software and accepting their terms and conditions for distribution, to require the user to own this proprietary software and use it as ...
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What should be done if one or more, but not all, of the contributors to a Wikipedia article require removal of attribution?
Alice has published a Web page incorporating content from a Wikipedia article written jointly by Bob and Eve. She is using the content under CC BY-SA 4.0. As is agreed to by Wikipedia contributors, ...
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Is it legal to backdate monthly software license fees if you reactivate a license?
I live in the UK and use software from a US-based company. I currently pay a software licence fee of $150 every six months.
This covers access to support and access to monthly software updates, new ...
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Accepting online contracts on behalf of a corporation
I use a computer and the Internet for work. I use a lot of software that is licensed to my employer.
Say some software licensed to my employer pops up its license on my employer's computer and demands ...
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Can a license contain optional or configurable terms?
The licenses I am familiar with are typically immutable / static text. They list their terms as they are, and they apply generally.
Is it possible for the license terms to contain configurable or ...
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Firmware code written under GPLv3 was modified. What should be published? [closed]
The firmware for an embedded device (e.g., a toaster) is modified significantly. Algorithms are rewritten from scratch, the code is made compatible with different hardware, etc. The end (hardware) ...
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Can companies use code that I wrote during a coding interview in their products?
Suppose a company's programmers are struggling to code a portion of a complex program. HR orders the questions of an upcoming interview to be replaced with that of the unfinished complex program. It ...
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If my product (open source or proprietary) requires Oracle GraalVM to work and bundles Oracle GraalVM, can I charge money for my product?
If my product (no matter open source or proprietary) requires Oracle GraalVM to work and bundles Oracle GraalVM, can I charge money for my product?
According to the link of GraalVM Free Terms and ...
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How long does a lifetime license last?
Years ago, I bought a Lifetime license, about $250 for a wordpress theme. I hadn't visited the company for a while, but yesterday saw that what I bought is no longer available for sale, no new updates ...
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How far do terms and conditions go to prevent sale of 3D printed models
It has already been made well clear that a 3D print is a derivative work and thus subject to any license it is obtained under. However, many designers include rules, such as you not being able to give ...
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I have mechanic licence from Turkey.Is there any way to easly get or change mechanic technician licenses in Alberta or Ontario [closed]
I am auto mechanic. I came to Canada 5 years ago I wanna do my job here but almost all places saying you need 4 years and every year 1500 hours and 8 weeks school than you can get license. Is there ...
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Understanding laws about medical and mental health advice/treatment [closed]
Can you help me understand which of these are legal and which are illegal in the U.S., and briefly why? (If the answers vary by state, assume state with "medium strictness", or just answer ...
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Is it possible to refuse an offered license?
Sometimes, things that are made of legal fiction are held to operate as normal even when someone attempts to disobey them.
For example, I can browse a web site and agree to its terms, or I can not ...
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Use-wrap contract formation for locally-run licensed software
In this answer, the Microsoft Windows license agreement is describe as having a sort of use-wrap method of action, where using Microsoft Windows creates an agreement between you and Microsoft because ...
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Have open-source hardware licenses ever been enforced when distributing a physical product?
As I have found out, there are "open-source hardware" licenses which are written in the spirit of "open-source software" licenses and require the user to publish a modified design ...
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Commerical usage of sentence-transformers/multi-qa-mpnet-base-cos-v1 [closed]
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 ...
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Closed source code theft prevention via license
Let's say I have an app stored as a closed source code (e.g on github) for which I have a software license in place (Apache 2.0), is this enough to prevent/prosecute an employee or just a random ...
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What if someone published program on invalid license and then fixed it?
I saw repository on GitHub where someone had LICENSE file as below:
Copyright year name
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in ...
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Licensing material generated with ChatGPT
For a while now, there has been a lot of discussion about large language models such s ChatGPT of OpenAI. A major issue has been whether newly trained, open-source models can be used in a commercial ...
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Is it legal to arrange music I don't have rights to if it is never performed?
I had the idea to transcribe and arrange the music from the musical Ride the Cyclone for a wind ensemble for my school. I got in contact with the company that owns the license (Broadway Licensing) to ...
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Can I use code from a computergame that is owned by a company A in order to develop my own game at company B? [closed]
I want to develop a game with my own company, lets call it Indiantruckaimulator, that is very similiar to the already existing game, Eurotruck simulator. I would greatly benefit if I could use their ...
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Is it common for software licenses to, as written, technically prohibit normal and expected use of the software?
In Is distributing software that makes modifications to video games legal? an example snippet of a video game license is given, which reads:
You may not copy the Software (except as specifically ...
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How does GPL affect a Makefile-only modification?
As a continuation of this question, does a Makefile modification when building GPL source mean my own program becomes GPL also ? For example, if some third-party GPL'd source contains exit(), and I ...
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Digidyne v. Data General: how does this not legally protect Apple macOS running on non-Apple branded hardware?
I was just reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_RDOS#Antitrust_lawsuit which discusses Digidyne v. Data General:
When Data General introduced the Data General Nova, a company called ...
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Legality and license choice for reverse-engineered project
I reverse engineered (by sniffing+x32dbg) part of the protocol for a board game client in order to build an alternative client on top of it while still using the official servers. I open-sourced the ...
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Creating an application to streamline Dungeons and Dragons
I've been working on an application that would streamline the average Dungeons and Dragons 5e tabletop experience, and it only recently occurred to me that doing so may infringe on copyrights.
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Why do some licenses have a clause stating that one can't violate the law?
Example of such a clause in the Creative MLOpen RAIL-M dated August 22, 2022 used by runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5:
You agree not to use the Model or Derivatives of the Model:
In any way that ...
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Warranty (globally) on software licenses: Beerware vs BSD-0 Clause, does beerware imply liability?
Hi most FOSS licenses like 0-clause BSD https://opensource.org/license/0bsd/ contain something like this:
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL
WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS ...
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Do I need a licence to fly a drone in public?
If I practice flying a drone in a public park not over gardens or using the camera for looking into windows do I need a licence?
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Can we use images from Wikimedia Commons in a product that we sell?
Say we are creating an educational application that needs to use a number of images as part of its lessons. Since it would be prohibitively expensive if we had to hire an artist to create all the ...
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Websites routinely fail to distribute licenses for included software packages, should I? [closed]
I'm building a website using Next.js, using tons of npm packages in the process. I'm verifying that none of these packages use GPL or other licenses that would require me to publish my own source code....
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