Questions tagged [open-source-software]
For questions about open source software, which is licensed under an open source license. Generally, the source code is made available, and it provides a set of terms to allow others to use it. You may want to consider asking your question at Open Source Stack Exchange as well.
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Would open source programs that use encryption be illegal under this draft of the "Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016"
The U.S. congress has a draft for a bill that would require companies to fetch information from a device when requested by a court. A consequence of this is that many types of security technology ...
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Can the Cyber Resilience Act make it illegal to retire?
Suppose Alice develops some software and releases it under an open source licence. She receives just enough money to be counted as "commercial". This may be donations from users, it may be ...
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Can you host a version of Wikipedia on your own domain and charge for it?
I am reading through these notes, trying to piece together a picture of what the rules/laws are regarding Wikipedia content:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks
https://en....
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Can an open source licence be revoked if it violates employer's IP?
Suppose a developer's contract says that all intellectual property (IP) rights to her code belong to her UK employer. While employed, she develops a library and open-sources it under the Apache 2.0 ...
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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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Do I really have to Open Source my project?
I'm currently working on a software which uses another software under the GPL version 3 license:
https://github.com/ViaVersion/ViaVersion/blob/dev/LICENSE
Now someone just came to me and said I have ...
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2
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Can a user sell my software (MIT license) without modification?
Basically, I was just wondering if I release a piece of open source software under the MIT license, does that mean that someone could take it and sell it onto people without doing any modification to ...
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Can I bundle MIT licensed components in a Apache 2.0 licensed project?
I am creating a project that I would like to open source and license under the Apache 2.0 License. The project will come with a bundled version of an open source component which is licensed under the ...
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Is it legal to write a software license if I'm not a licensed attorney?
I was hoping to create my own open-source license since none of the existing ones seem to work for what I want. However, someone mentioned to me that in the USA it's illegal to practice law without a ...
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How long does a GPL licencee have to respond to a source code request before it becomes a GPL violation?
I have requested source code for a product that contains software licensed under GPL 2. The product includes a written offer to provide source code if you send a written request by email. The offer is ...
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Is WINE illegal?
Is WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) illegal?
Given that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held in Oracle v. Google that APIs are copyrightable, is WINE (which reproduces the Windows ...
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Do copyright notices need to be placed at the beginning of a file?
I'm a student and won't be publishing code any time soon, but I am working on improving the composition of my code. I'm interested in open source and I've only seen copyright notices and license text ...
user25777
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Is it legal to write software to convert data from a proprietary format?
I have created a piece of software that converts a proprietary format from the database blob of a large, well known commercial software company into the equivalent open source data type. The large ...
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How do trademarks apply to Open Source?
How do trademarks apply to open-source?
Hypothetical:
In the early 1990s, there is a company operating under the name Portable Network Graphics, who brands their products with the mark PNG. They ...
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Trade restrictions on open source software
Apparently the US has put Huawei on a trade blacklist that prevents US companies to trade with Huawei. With hardware and proprietary software it is straightforward how this can be executed (don't make ...
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Am I at risk by storing or using software that violates copyright?
Imagine the following scenario:
A software company copies code from some open source project and includes it in their own software without giving credit to the original authors, violating the open ...
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Who owns the code when my employer wants something similar to my existing open source project?
I have a similar situation to this question.
My employer hired me knowing that I work on some open source projects, but for a long time, showed no interest in my open source projects. Now they want ...
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Is a copyright notice with a non-existent name invalid?
If a person changes their name, do any copyrights registered to them still apply?
Or at least, as this is the subject in mind, does any software licensed to them still hold the same copyright?
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Obtaining source code from an uncooperative company when you're an author
According to an answer on Methods for obtaining source code from an uncooperative company:
You're probably out of luck. The company distributing this firmware has an obligation to provide you the ...
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Q about consequences of a software license amendment regarding patents: Facebook's open-source "react"
UPDATE 22 Sep, 2017
"Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js" (MIT license, PATENT file removed)
https://code.facebook.com/posts/300798627056246/relicensing-react-jest-flow-and-immutable-js/
...
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Are Word-Frequency lists copyrightable?
If someone generates word frequency lists somehow. For example by analysing a web corpus or data from keyboards. Is this form of list of words and their frequencies copyrightable? For example if ...
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Do international sanctions have an impact on Open Source Software?
Background
Recently I was reading about embargoes and sanctions on Iran (also this link) and before Sudan, and it got me thinking about how they could impact Open Source Software. Sanctions being ...
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Can I work on patent-infringing software in private, then release it when said patent expires?
This is not a scenario I'm actually going through; this is just a thought I had. The situation proposed in this question is entirely hypothetical.
Suppose some algorithm -- for this post, let's say ...
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How to legally contribute to open source projects (and other public stuff) in Germany?
Being a software developer it is very important to contribute to public projects and participate in public professional activities. This includes open source projects (which may belong to other ...
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At what point and how should I change the license/Copyright notice when I create a derivative?
If I take a piece of software that is licensed as MIT (quoted at the end), and use it as a scaffold to create for my own thing, do I need to keep including the old license perpetually? This would seem ...
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GPLv3-licensed project on Github seems to try to restrict commercial use
I found an interesting project (tool for numerical simulations) on Github with the following paragraph in its README:
You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the
GNU General ...
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Is it legal for me to provide a download of an unchanged fork of an application that is on GitHub?
I plan to write some tech blogs, where one of them showcases an application from GitHub without a license. Now I just forked it as a backup because I don't want my viewers can't find it someday if the ...
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Can a child release his own work into e.g. the public domain?
I (15 years old; living in Germany) write software now for ~four years and wondered whether I can release it into the public domain or under some free software license without having to ask somebody. ...
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Is there a fair use exception for trademarks?
The copyright law has the famous fair-use exception, where you can legally use some parts of copyrighted works without having to pay any royalties to, or ask any permission from, the copyright holder.
...
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Copyright in copyleft licence?
Is the copyright mentioned in GPL v3 used just for the sake of defining the word? (It's not copyrighted, but the word encompasses the same actions that would violate the copyright if it was ...
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Who can publish GPLv4?
I was thinking about the or later part that is often used in licensing
software. When reading https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html, I've found
this:
The Free Software Foundation may publish ...
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Do I need to include the full text of the MIT license in the UI of my app?
We're using an open-source software library which is distributed under the MIT license. The key line of the license is as follows:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be ...
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Can I bundle Apache 2.0 licensed components in a GPL 3 licensed project?
I am creating a project that I would like to open source and license under the GPL 3 License. The project will come with a bundled version of an open source component which is licensed under the ...
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Does using Java or Mono open me up to the possibility of being sued by Oracle or Microsoft?
Given the recent lawsuit between Google and Oracle due to Oracle's claims of the unfair usage of the Java API's in Android.
I have a large amount of Java and C# code for certain back end processes on ...
MrCyber
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What is the Copyright Status of code posted on JSFiddle?
Programmers share code on the site JSFiddle http://jsfiddle.net, the website section called Licence states:
All code posted to the site belongs to the poster and no license is enforced.
jsFiddle are ...
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Is it legal to open source a spyware?
I have created a simple spyware on which whenever a form is submitted on any website, it will serialize the form data then send the data to my email address.
I am only currently using it on my own ...
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Can I inspect websites' source in teaching video?
As a web developer, I find that we can learn a ton about HTML, CSS and JavaScript by opening the Developer Tools in Chromium and inspect elements, seeing the names other developer choose for their CSS ...
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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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Are shell scripts considered binaries for licensing purposes?
There are a number of licenses that contain the term "binary distribution". For example, https://github.com/boostorg/beast/blob/develop/LICENSE_1_0.txt:
A simple permissive license only ...
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What is a binary form in software BSD license (and other licenses that didn't define it)?
BSD license says (emphasis mine):
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met...
It sounds "...
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Meaning of uppercase paragraphs in software licenses
For example, in the MIT license we find this paragraph:
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF ...
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In the US, under what circumstances can I re-write code I previously wrote but do not own?
I write code for company X in the USA using popular technology Y. In the course of my job I end up developing a number of useful libraries/widgets/utilities for use within the Y ecosystem that have ...
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How to enforce GPL if the copyright holder doesn't have access to the source code of violating software?
I'd like to publish a C library project that I have written on GitHub and license it under GPL, so I am doing some research on open source licenses and some confusion comes to mind.
Let's say Evil ...
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Open source company - how to protect myself from being sued?
In 2 and a bit weeks I'll be participating in a hackathon, where I'll create the prototype of an application that I want to base a company off of in the maybe-near future.
Both the prototype and the ...
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Can I legally make a real mobile app based on a fictional app from a TV show?
There's a fictional mobile app in a Netflix TV show that I'd like to make a real thing. I'm an independent developer, I don't plan on monetizing it in any way, and it's going to be open-source. Is it ...
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How are open source licenses valid without consideration?
I'm not a lawyer or law student in any capacity, but I've read in multiple sources that a contract is not valid unless there is consideration for both parties.
With this in mind, how can licenses for ...
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If I post my own code to Stack Overflow, can I then use that code in a project that uses a license other than CC-BY-SA?
Suppose that I have a block of code that represents my own original work (i.e. I am the copyright holder), and that I would like to post this code on Stack Overflow--either to answer someone else's ...
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Re-Releasing, Re-Naming and Re-Writing Open Source GNU V3 Licensed software
MAIN QUESTION SUMMARY:
Can someone with real world experience, who has actually Modified, Re-Wrote, Re-Released and Re-Named Open Source GNU V3 Licensed software; please share their experience on the ...
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Is it legal to use the Tor Network and Tor Software in the United States?
Is it legal to use the following provided by the Tor Project:
Using the Tor Browser
Using the Tor Network
Browsing *.onion domains
Browsing the "Hidden Wiki"
Provided I'm not doing anything illegal ...
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Is it legal for manufacturers to lock bootloaders on Android phones?
Some backgroud :
A bootloader is a very low level piece of software that runs first and loads an operating system of some other tool. On a lot of new Android devices the bootloader is "locked", that ...
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