General info on Open Source licensing (for idiots!)

Question

Hello all,

I'm about to release a small open source (web) application and I can't find any definitive advice on how to go about doing so correctly.

I want to release my code under the GPL v3. My program uses a number of libraries etc that are licensed differently. All are open source and unmodified by me, but they're not all GPL. My question is obvious probably, but I'm not sure ...

• Do I just licence my own code and leave the libraries?
• Do I include a copy of the licence of all the components (not just my own)?
• Is there any issue bundling differently licensed components together?

The project will be distributed on SourceForge, on which I have listed it as GPL3.

Any advice/obvious answers warmly appreciated.

Mark.

Answer 1

What are the licences of the other libraries? If they are all permissive, such as BSD, you can relicense them under the GPL, and distribute the whole thing as GPL.

Answer 2

• You license only your own code. Others' code is not yours to license.
• If you actually ship the other components as part of your tarball (or zip or whatever), then you should include their licenses (because that is usually a stipulation of those licenses, and also because otherwise your users have no right to use the code). But if you don't distribute those other components, only telling your users to get them somehow, you don't include the licenses of those other things. Remember that open-source licensing is about distribution rights, not usage rights, so if you don't distribute them you don't need to bother with licenses.
• Bundling things with different licenses together is an issue. You need to read the licenses in question to verify whether what you are trying to do is allowed.