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GPL/MIT licence, my software, and I'm not a lawyer...

3 points by 9ec4c12949a4f3 ↗ HN
I'm entirely confused by how GPLv1,2,3, MIT, Apache and other licences impact my software. It's not that I haven't read them, like MIT's

>Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so

But what if I'm using jQuery/jQueryUI plugins where they say "Oh we're under MIT and GPL," where jQuery's website says that I can simply pick the one I want.

I don't want to have to take my entire code base and have to release it because I goofed somewhere and something was under a licence.

My product essentially a CRM tool with a suite of additional tools for use in the industry, which will be packed as a LAMP server and sold as a subscription. It's not an open framework for doing cool things, but I'm using things like jQuery because it works really well. I'm using Ubuntu because it's solid, I'm running apache/mysql... Again, I'm not a lawyer, and you probably are not one either, but I have no experience with launched products with open source licences, and my fear that my entire product needs to be released to the world for people to modify scares me.

edit: Thanks for helping to clear this up everyone :)

7 comments

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davidw
MIT/Apache/BSD can all be used in 'commercial/proprietary' code, and do not force you to released to the world or anyone else. You may have to say that you utilize their code, but you certainly don't have to release it to the world unless you want to.

The GPL has some requirements, and you need to be more careful with it.

9ec4c12949a4f3
Any advice on how I should consider dual-licences? For example, I use the DataTables jQuery plugin. I would be willing to pay for a licence but I have no idea how to interpret their disclaimer:

>DataTables is dual licensed under the GPL v2 license or a BSD (3-point) license.

Does this mean I pick one to use? I'm having a hard time accepting/realizing that there is one product with my choice in licences.

davidw
Yes, this means you can pick the BSD license.
madhouse
Yes, you get to pick one. And no, you don't have to notify anyone, or do anything else than that. You pick the license of your choice, and use the plugin according to that license.
madhouse
jQuery is dual-licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses - you can choose whichever you want. If you want your code to be closed source, you want the MIT license.

You do not have to do anything about that - you can safely use it without any further thought.

What you need to pay attention to, is that while you CAN bundle GPL'd code with closed source code, you cannot use or derive from GPL'd code, unless your code is under the GPL too.

Thus, as long as you stick to MIT/Apache/BSD/LGPL libraries, you're safe. You can bundle GPL'd programs with your system, but you can't use and extend those sources, unless you release those parts under the GPL too.

9ec4c12949a4f3
This makes sense now. Okay so just to confirm I'm on the same page...

If I write my own code from scratch, but I'm using the library from Jquery, it's running on apache, it connects to mysql, it does whatever, that's fine I'm using that software as part of the box I wish to re-sell because I didn't modify and re-sell that software, I'm selling the configuration of the server and my code?

madhouse
That's pretty much correct.

I'm not a lawyer, either, mind you, but that has been my understanding =)