Hi all. I have been looking into IKVMing Apache's FOP project to use with our .NET app. It's a commercial product, and looking into licensing, IKVM runs into some sticky areas because of its use of GNU Classpath. From what I've seen, no one can say for sure if this stuff can be used in a commercial product. Has anyone used IKVM, or a...
I'm working on a personal project in ASP.NET MVC that I plan on making open source. In the past, I've open-sourced quite a few PHP scripts and UNIX-based stuff. For those, I typically went with a BSD/Apache style license, unless I was including a library that prevented it. On the Linux/PHP side of things, that usually meant something tha...
What's the best license to use for your software when you want to be paid for commercial use but are happy for non-profits/geeks to use for free? ...
We are currently using MySQL for a product we are building, and are keen to move to PostgreSQL as soon as possible, primarily for licensing reasons. Has anyone else done such a move? Our database is the lifeblood of the application and will eventually be storing TBs of data, so I'm keen to hear about experiences of performance improveme...
I've spent my downtime at work this summer writing a framework of sorts for facilitating my day to day work. In short it loads a xml with markup that defines the blocks of the site, their content and the styling of these (very similar to html), handles the loading of assets and such. Now I'm rather pleased with how this is turning out, ...
Is the proliferation of open source licenses just another example of programmers living NYI (Not Invented Here) syndrome? I know there are some big differences between some of the big licenses (e.g., GPL, Apache, BSD) but when you start looking to see many projects creating their own licenses. Why? References: http://en.wikipedia.org...
I've recently switched from being an employee of a small consulting company to being an independent consultant and as time goes on I will need to upgrade Windows and Visual Studio. So what is the most affordable way to go about this for a small time developer? My previous boss suggested I get a TechNet Plus subscription for OS licenses,...
Can you please explain the difference between MS SQL Device and User CAls. I need the MS SQL Server for an intranet website, how do I assess whow many license I need and what type? ...
What open source licenses are more corporate-friendly, i.e., they can be used in commercial products without the need to open source the commercial product? ...
Let's suppose you deploy a network-attached appliances (small form factor PCs) in the field. You want to allow these to call home after being powered on, then be identified and activated by end users. Our current plan involves the user entering the MAC address into an activation page on our web site. Later our software (running on the b...
I am developing a GPL-licensed application in Python and need to know if the GPL allows my program to use proprietary plug-ins. This is what the FSF has to say on the issue: If a program released under the GPL uses plug-ins, what are the requirements for the licenses of a plug-in? It depends on how the program invokes its plug-i...
A couple of years ago, ZDNet ran an article interviewing Greg Stein on the Google Code project, discussing several software licences and why Google Code only accepts a few of them. That article's been one of my biggest influences when it comes to "understanding" a few of the more common licences around. With relevance to the question ...
In simple terms, what are the reasons for, and what are the differences between the GPL v2 and GPL v3 open source licenses? Explanations and references to legal terms and further descriptions would be appreciated. ...
I'm a software engineer, not a lawyer, and my university doesn't offer any courses geared toward licensing software. In fact, their law-related courses are lacking (but slowly growing in number). Where can I go to learn about open-source licenses and how to choose them? ...
There are lots of difference software licenses. The GPL is pretty strict and aims to keep software "free". Many projects use more liberal license, e.g. that are more "business friendly". Are there any good resources for people to read to decide what is a good license to use? If you have released licensed software, what license(s) do yo...
I'm writing a small GUI application that will be released under the Apache License 2.0. I'd like to pretty it up using some free icons. Of course, just pirating content is wrong. I'd like the copyright license of any images to complement that of the application - that is, permissive use of the content with appropriate attribution (includ...
Is there a risk of legal trouble if you include GPL or LGPL licensed icons in a closed source software? Would it force it to become open source just to include the icon? Does it matter if the icon is compiled as a resource? Are the creative common licensed icons safe to use if you follow the attribution rules specified by the licen...
My company is looking to start distributing some software we developed and would like to be able to let people try the software out before buying. We'd also like to make sure it can't be copied and distributed to our customers' customers. One model we've seen is tying a license to a MAC address so the software will only work on one mac...
Just saw this at the top of a piece of code: \* @license OPPL What on earth is an OPPL license? Google has been uncharacteristically inconclusive. Has anyone come across this beast before, and what are it's main implications? ...
My employer was recently acquired by a much larger company. In the process of sorting out all the legal details around our licenses for our development software, we have learned that the vendor of our IDE charges a "nominal" fee of 25% of the cost of a new license to transfer our existing licenses to the new corporate name. This struck...