Let's say I want to develop a public website and make it open source. Can an open source license demand that derivative work keep a link to the original site in a prominent way? On the one hand this shouldn't look like a problem, as it seems similar to the widespreaad "leave credits clause in source code". On the other hand, source cod...
Hey! I am working on License Agreement for my application. Most software License Agreements refer to a company name as the author and the owner of the software. I don't have a registered company. However I have a web-site, say "pashasoft.com" that is registered on my name. Suppose I refer to Pashasoft in the License Agreement as the auth...
Like (probably) most people here, I'm not a fan of Software Patents. It makes it hard to write software, especially for an operating system like Mac OS X, where you generally want to do things "the Macintosh way". But when Apple patents techniques that they use in their own OS and software, it's very difficult for third-party developer...
I am considering the move to the other side of development, as a contract programmer. SO has given me a good few hints on the kind of figures to quote ( and why ), and a few points to bear in mind such as Non-competition and [IP Protection] Having worked as a programmer for a while, I know that a few reasons for deadline delays may ...
My current employer has an "I own you contract". The wording was very ambiguous so I didn't understand it when I signed it. Needless to say, I have left this company and will be looking for a new job. Which companies that you know of have the same policy so I know not to waste my time with them? Any of the big names (Adobe, Google, Amaz...
What are the rights of contributors to open source projects? I'm not talking about the project owners or main developers, but about devs who have contributed significant, if clearly minority, parts of code, or who have consistently handed in patches and fixes. What are their rights to the project? What happens if, say, in a GPL project...
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...
I want to use a tool (ffmpeg) that is under GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 for some components. To do so, I only call it in my software as such: System.Diagnostics.Process p = new System.Diagnostics.Process(); p.StartInfo = new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo("lgplSoftware....
Today I had a bad surprise learning about some implications of the GPL license, mainly that I couldn't use it as freely as I thought. Now I know. What else should I know, and more widely, what should every developer know about legal things like that? You can separate employees, freelancers, open source projects contributors (etc.) o...
The question is about a free and open source product which allows users to catalog and organize their personal ebook collection. The book's info could be harvested from various websites (amazon, B&N, etc.) via ISBN queries. I was wondering if there are legal issues for developing such a product, in regards to violating "terms of use" of...
Hi There, I have downloaded the ribbon control for WPF, I noticed that there are terms for me to follow if I need to use it. However, I have checked some of the posts saying that the Preview cannot be used for production purposes, however, version 1 of ribbon control will be able to and will be released at Q3/Q4 of 2009, alright, we ar...
So I've written a vertical market application that has interest from a large corporation. Hurrah! What kind of software license should I use? In particular: Currently I own the company that wrote the software. I don't want to devalue the worth of the company by "giving the software away". The software is a mix of a Web site and Wind...
In the installer for a product I need some sort of license text that basically says "don't copy" - but does this in a 3000 character long legal text ... Where can I find good examples of these to reuse? I mean all small tools/products out there that are for sales and have these text can't have hired a lawyer - right? ...
I am a web developer based in London, UK. As part of my personal website, I include examples of projects I have worked on. This includes projects that I have worked on personally along with projects I have worked on during my time with two previous employers. One of these employers is now insistant that I should remove all work from my ...
I have found a post http://stackoverflow.com/questions/999056/ethics-of-robots-txt/999088#999088 discussing a matter of robots.txt on web sites. Generally, I agree with the principals. However, there are commercial tools checking Google positions by - very likely - scraping Google for results, due to lack of API (in case someone doesn't ...
I'm not interested in getting version information. All I want to do is to make sure my application will only run on a legal version of Windows and not on a pirated version. Windows uses some trick to determine this but still allows pirated versions to continue to run, although with some limits. So, is there a way to check if the applica...
What is a freelancer's liability in the case of data loss, system outage, money lose, injury, death, and all other bad things that can arise from the use of the software? I understand this is something that can be arranged in a written contract. But what are the standards if software was exchanged for money with no written contract. Th...
I was originally hired at the company that I currently work at in a SysAdmin\ Software Support Role. My responsibilities eventually morphed into me spending most of my time writing small applications for the company's internal use and for some customers, (although none of this was put in writing). My question is do I retain any rights t...
I have been doing consulting for a customer at a low hourly rate with the purpose of building a long term business relationship. The work consisted in learning, maintaining and modifying a big code base. Part of the reason I charged a low rate was to amortize over time the cost of learning the code. I have been working for this customer...
First bit of the question: What are the legal requirements of LGPL code during the deployment of a commercial product? Software package should include LGPL licence file Anything else? Shall we add a line to our "software agreement text" where you need to click next in the installer ? Second bit, Is there any known / accepted ways of...