Is it ethical/legal to modify sourceforge.net projects and sell them commercially?

Question

If the new product is an extension of the old project with cool new features? Or if the new project is a code converted from PHP to Python

Answer 1

Do the licences of the old projects permit this? If they do then it is legal (within the specifications of the licence of the old project in question).

Of course, this is assuming that the licences of the old projects are themselves legal and valid. I'm not sure what they would look like if they were not legal/valid, and I'm even less certain of the implications of basing a product off something that does not have a legal/valid licence.

As far as ethical, I think the "right" thing to do is to have a disclaimer explaining that your product is based on a pre-existing one (and of course give credit where it's due, to the authors of the original), and list the enhancements/modifications you've made. But this is an area that will probably have a lot of other opinions...

Answer 2

That would seem to depend upon the license. That said, are you sure you want to be asking legal questions to a bunch of random people? Lawyers could far better tell you what's really legal, and would be far, far safer to trust.

Answer 3

Everything depends on the wording of the exact license in question, but that caveat aside...

Generally, it is perfectly legal, and even ethical to modify an Open Source project and sell it. This is what is done with all those shrink-wrapped boxes of Linux you see (or at least used to see) on store shelves.

What is generally not legal is to provide a different license than the one you were given, or to do other things that violate the license in some way, like try to prevent your purchasers from obtaining source code. Most Free Software licenses will even require you to make the sources of your modifications available (only to those who you give your product though).

Obviously, this means you can't legally prevent someone from taking what you did, making 10000 copies, and offering them for sale cheaper than you. That's the deal. You have to offer something to your customers worth paying you for (support, convienence, cool branding, a nifty box, something).

Answer 4

Legally it depends on the license, of course. There are some "Commercially friendly ones". But you have to follow the license to the letter (e.g., copyrights). Then there are issues like liability, export restrictions, etc. In addition, your stuff may lose some of its rights so others might be able to copy it. If you're going to be selling the stuff, you might need a lawyer.

I would say that unless the changes are significant compared to the original and you are adding a lot of value, it is probably not "moral" since you are profiteering from somebody else's work. Companies that commercially release open-source software (like Linux distributions) usually add some value and support that isn't in the original. But business and morality have little to do with one another.