LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] What effects would these liscenses have on a work?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by des_a (Post 5706640)

I was afraid that if I tried to use something like the GPL, I might not be able to make money by selling the software.

Protecting your ability to make money selling your software is integral to open source. And that includes the GPL.

You might want to review existing licenses, using resources such as these:

https://tldrlegal.com/
https://choosealicense.com/

An important software development rule is that you never start something new without first reviewing what's already been done.

Please point me to where I could look up or provide info here on how I might be able to make money if I used the GPL. I would need some existing ways people make money on it. Only ways that have been successful. If I find this works, perhaps the easiest way would be to just use the GPL.

Second, I have never actually applied it to any program, nor have I attempted yet to apply any other license to a program. So explain in the case of the latest version of the GPL, how I might be able to do that, in the correct manner. Walk me through it. The docs on the website for Free Software Foundation don't seem to help me enough at this.

Third, from my understanding, for a license to actually hold up in court, it needs to be copyrighted in the US, by paying a fee, not that copyright isn't automatic in most cases, but it won't hold up in court in the US unless it's registered. You have to pay a fee to do this. a) Is that true in general? b) Is that true in the specific case of things like the GPL? c) Are there any examples where it has held up by just using their terms to apply it, and then distributing it in the proper way, by the owner of the code, and assuming that the code for the program is entirely written by you, with no (non-educational) outside help from people? d) Assuming that "c" is the case, is it legal being the owner of the code (at least in the US), to distribute it under more than one license and give the user a choice of which one to accept, "probably" assuming one of them is the GPL?

Quote:

Originally Posted by des_a (Post 5706667)

I'm not working on the OS again yet. I had started an OS, which needs to be scrapped and rewritten from scratch again. It did very little, didn't quite get past the boot up process yet, but it could print, "Hello World" to the screen willy nilly.

What the idea is, for my rewrite, however, is this:

1. Finish the languages as far as application development is concerned.

2. Write an OS, for the sake of learning to write Operating Systems in existing technology.

3. Rewrite the interpreter, as an OS, using some of the code that was part of my learning OS.

4. At that point, I am able to write the real OS I desire in my languages which I had created, which would be compiled to the PNF language and be interpreted by the OS. Then, the whole OS, becomes a new type of bootloader, in effect, and my OS is written in my own language(s). I could easily cross-compile the OS, on Windows or Linux at that point.

Good luck with all that. I'll be interested to see how it goes.

Quote:

An important software development rule is that you never start something new without first reviewing what's already been done.

No resources were lost here, because part of the reason I did this was for educational purposes, but if it produced something I liked, I'd use it later...

Quote:

Originally Posted by des_a (Post 5706673)

Second, I have never actually applied it to any program, nor have I attempted yet to apply any other license to a program. So explain in the case of the latest version of the GPL, how I might be able to do that, in the correct manner. Walk me through it. The docs on the website for Free Software Foundation don't seem to help me enough at this.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html

Quote:

Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as “Copyright 1999 Terry Jones”), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL).
[...]
You should also include a copy of the license itself somewhere in the distribution of your program.
[...]
There is no legal requirement to register your copyright with anyone; simply distributing the program makes it copyrighted. However, it is a very good idea to register the copyright with the US Registry of Copyrights, because that puts you in a stronger position against anyone who violates the license in the US. Most other countries have no system of copyright registration.

Quote:

Good luck with all that. I'll be interested to see how it goes.

It could take years to complete that process, but I'd be anxious to see it start falling into place now.

Could an owner of the code choose to release under more than one license legally?

I found the answer to the last, on the GPL website. It is okay to do so.

I think you've answered enough questions for now, so I'll mark as closed unless I need to revisit one or more of these questions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by des_a (Post 5706640)

I would like on my OS, to create a concept called "license files". Basically a liscense file is a file "linked" to another file, and every file on the OS will require a license file, even if it's the default liscense which really doesn't provide restrictions or anything. A liscense file cannot be linked to another license file, you are free to do whatever you want with those, and use any of those for any purpose you want.

The license file, is a mechanism that would have the potential to replace the normal way of licensing stuff. A user who wants to follow the law, would not have to try to memorize each license that they accept, or refer to it constantly, and decide what to do. They would simply let the license file do the work for them. The computer wouldn't let you do anything that the license file didn't say was okay to do (or prevent you from doing.)

This is more-or-less the notion of "policies," as implemented e.g. on Microsoft Windows today. But, in actual practice, these can be very complicated and difficult to deal with. It can be hard to figure out what a particular application/user/what-have-you is supposed to be able to do, and isn't. It can be difficult to figure out why things are or are not working, because the elements which control this activity are "far removed from" the things that are being controlled. And, if you are really cranking-up to perform hundreds of thousands of operations per second, the overhead cranks-up, too.