views:

87

answers:

1

Hi,

Who owns the IP rights for nHibernate and Castle? I am aware that they are open source, but is there a company/individual who holds the IP for these?

Thanks

+2  A: 

I believe a company named Red Hat has IP of Hibernate/NHibernate/JBoss.

Also I believe Castle Stronghold has IP of Castle.

But since they are open source why does this matter?


If the commenters are correct on your goal then all you need to do is in your application have a text file in some format (I always jsut call mine NOTICE.txt) and have a reference to the open source framework/tool you are using. Example for NHibernate:

=========================================================================
==  NHibernate distribution                                            ==
=========================================================================

This software is distributed under the terms of the FSF Lesser GNU Public 
License (see lgpl.txt).

This product uses software developed by the Apache Software Foundation 
(http://www.apache.org/).

Then just add something like that but with castle's information and you should be good to go!

Jacob Nelson
If I wa to buy the IP/ build a commercial product on these, who do I go to (not that I would want to)? jBoss has not been supporting nHibernate for some time now. Could you provide a link?
SharePoint Newbie
@SharePoint, you mean you want to buy out the company and/or release commercial versions of the open-source versions? If you just want to release a commercial product that *consumes* these frameworks, you don't have to do anything -- just use them.
Kirk Woll
I understand that. What I want to ask is if someone copies code from this in a commercial product, will this be a breach of IP? If it is, who holds the IP?
SharePoint Newbie
@SharePoint: NHibernate is LGPL and Castle is Apache-licensed. You can safely build commercial tools using these libraries.
Mauricio Scheffer
@SharePoint: that said, you *do* need to comply to the LGPL and Apache licenses. Consult with your lawyer if in doubt. StackOverflow is not the proper place for these questions.
Mauricio Scheffer
@Mauricio Scheffer: Oh, that's what he meant by his question, thanks for deciphering that for me! Should have the correct answer now.
Jacob Nelson