when does a software become "proprietary" ?

Question

say a company is using Open source libraries, or programs, and packaging it into a proprietary solution. or perhaps, the engineers have copy pasted certain section of those open source libraries and have compiled it now, into a very useful "proprietary" software suite.

what legal troubles will this company face if any ? are you allowed to do this ? i mean the customer doesn't see the source codes, only runs the binary files on their computer.

for example, i find an excellent NLP library in python, and decide to use it in my program that i am selling for $4000 USD (i write like 10 lines of code and let the library do the work). could i get into trouble ? would i need to write the NLP library myself from scratch to be considered "proprietary" ?

danke

Answer 1

I think it would depend on the license of the code/libraries you are using. IANAL.

Answer 2

It depends entirely on the License. If the code is licensed under the GPL, the GPL carries a legal requirement that any code statically combined (ie, compiled with) GPL code must also be GPL. The Lesser GPL (LGPL) allows for dynamic linking. Of course, the GPLs restrictions don't kick in until you distribute the product, which includes binary form.

If it's the BSD license, then you really have no requirement to do anything once you've taken the code. The BSD license serves more to indemnify the creator of damages than restrict use of the code.

And then, there is a large spectrum of licenses in between the above extremes.

If you're thinking about using any Open Source code in a proprietary project, I'd consult a lawyer first. They may not always get it right, but they should be able to help.

Answer 3

As the other answers note, it depends entirely on the license of the source code that you are using. If you are doing anything commercially I would consider hiring a lawyer to review any licenses you are getting involved with. Here are some links with information about popular open source licenses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licenses
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category