Is copying an API a breach of copyright? Say for example that a proprietary spreadsheet software exposes a programmatic interface with a nice, easy to use and learn, flexible yet deep API. Can I implement the same API to another spreadsheet program? Or to csv files or database tables, or whatever? Or would the API (with a completely d...
Are computer languages copyrighted or have some restrictions imposed on them how they can be used? What does that mean in practice? If so, what can be done or what cannot be done? Could I make a compiler or ide or anything for any of them? For example for Pl/Sql? ...
And also, do you use pics found online in your projects? ...
Is putting copyright notice in the 'about' window enough? I know that a software program is copyrighted by default, but it's recommended to add a notice somewhere anyway, well as far as i know. ...
If you look at files in Windows Explorer, a DOC file has it's icon, a PDF, etc. That is if the application is installed on the computer. Are these icons copyright protected or can they be use in applications? Reason is: I want to show a standard "Word Document" icon for a .doc file to the user, even if Word is not installed on the curr...
The MIT license states: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Does this apply to just the source code? Or must copyright also be included in all compiled forms including binary and executable. For those who were wondering, the license d...
A theoretical question regarding licensing and embeddable apps aka widgets/gadgets many sites offer nowadays. I'm using Creative Commons licensing in my example as that would be the case if this hypothetical situation would be turned into a real one by me :) Let's say we have a noncommercial site, www.noncommercialsite.org, that contain...
I'm working on a FOSS project where I am the main contributor. In each source file I have a copyright and license statement at the top of the file. The copyright notice names me as copyright holder. From time to time I get contributions by other developers. Sometimes these contributions add new files and sometimes they just change existi...
Let's say a developer writes code in some new language, which he then sends to a server. That server takes the code he wrote and turns it into c++ code which is subsequently compiled. From there, that binary package is sent back to the developer for distribution. Does the GPL license allow this? ...
Hi all. I have been working on a java sim game for some time, and finally ready to open it up online and allow other developers to help me. (Using google code) There are several parts to this question. Firstly, I've used the pathfinding code from the cokeandcode site (which you may or may not know). I contacted the author and he said i...
What are the benefits and goals of having a license commment in the header of the source file? Why are you adding a license header to your source code? ...
Hi guys, During my last internship, I took an open source tool and enhanced it as a part of my project. Because of my growing interest in that tool, I took it home and added some more functionalities to make it more useful for others outside and then thought of publishing it. The original source code is available in public domain witho...
I'm writing an application that is largely javascript based. The javascript uses a java applet on the page to work as a socket bridge. However, if someone was to steal the javascript code I have written, would that infringe on copyright laws? What if I attached a license at the top of the .js file? I was thinking of writing the applicati...
What is the best way of protecting my source code from being distributed without permission. I've thought of perhaps moving my source to another server. Also toyed with the idea of obfuscating my code, but this might make it a pain to alter at a later date. Has anyone any better ideas? ...
Gnu GPL page advocates a following header in each file of GPL project: This file is part of Foobar. Foobar is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your optio...
I'm building a CMS on codeigniter. I'm modifying codeigniter in small ways to make it work with my ideas more seamlessly. But I wonder - are there any restrictions on how I can profit from it? I would think I could build a website with the CMS and charge for it. But what if say, later on I buy a server and set up several accounts for sev...
I'm wondering - is there a steganography solution for digital images which is resistant to image manipulations? With "manipulations" I mean the most standard operations - recompressing JPEGs (or even changing file formats entirely), cropping and scaling. The application of this method would naturally be for image copyright protection. I...
I'm a bit confused about the laws applied to web fonts. I know that it's OK to use fonts like Arial, Times Romans, Georgia, etc...I think it's illegal to use other commercial fonts. Are there websites that provide free fonts? If there are. Can I just use them directly without mentioning the creator of the free font or without linking th...
I have just made some changes to a jQuery ui widget and I would like to release them. I'm not concerned about releasing the changes under the same license, but I would like to know how I should indicate copyright for my changes? The original copyright statement (below) only refers to an authors.txt file. /* * jQuery UI Draggable 1.7....
Is there a standard way people enforce the inclusion of copyright notices in their java/maven builds? I realize that it shouldn't be necessary since the product itself is copy-written and if someone has my source I have much bigger problems, but I'm being asked to check and was wondering if checkstyle, PMD or something else handled this...