Question about copyright

PeterUK · 07-07-2009, 10:18 AM

Hi Everybody,

I spoke to a person that make me think about copyright.

The question is which licence to go for! the two I have head so far is GPL and Open Source. The dilemma is I am trying to the develop a application that will be use in the future for a new company.

My case maybe is a bit different because I not planning to make money licensing my software to someone else. If not my company use the software to provide a service, but I had a problem if I use GPL the guy I've spoken to said that I must publish my code, so what is preventing after 1 year development down the line the competition download the code and them start competing with me in the same field/service without any developing time or cost, it doest not sound right!

I can still see really difficult a judge in a court of law will overrule the face you have done search, spend time to understand it, modifying it to you criteria and creating a whole new application and you don't own any right of it.

To me the solution to the problem is not release the code at the end, which licence should I be looking at?

The other point I've had done lot of development on Microsoft Windows, trying to move away from it because I could get away of pay a fee on software licence on every machine, but if I will lose my copyright of my application just for using a user interface class, is it worth it?

PeterUK · 07-07-2009, 10:27 AM

From where I can see it does not obligate to release the end code!

Quote:

XXXX has been placed under an MIT license. I believe this to be as close as possible to public domain while satisfying those who say that a copyright notice is required in some countries. The COPYING file read as follows:

All source, data files and other contents of the XXXX package are available under the following terms. Note that the XXXXX and earlier was "public domain" as is common with US government work, but apparently this is not a well defined legal term in many countries. I am placing everything under the following MIT style license because I believe it is effectively the same as public domain, allowing anyone to use the code as they wish, including making proprietary derivatives.

Though I have put my own name as copyright holder, I don't mean to imply I did the work.

Copyright (c) 2000, XXXXXX

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, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

PeterUK · 07-07-2009, 11:11 AM

this is the website
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

I cannot see that said that you have to publish realise you modified work, may I wrong? If I am, could you please point me in the text? Thanks

CSandman · 07-07-2009, 11:48 AM

The main idea behind open source licenses is that the programs are free to use and to modify. With most of the ones I've seen you don't need to include code with the binaries but you have to make it available at the very least by request. To prevent competition from 3rd parties with modified copies of your program there is usually a clause that says something like, "This software must be distributed free of charge and this copyright notice must be included in every modified version". This also forces a lot of companies to change business models. For example rather than selling their operating systems the makers of SUSE, and redhat, and mandriva have centered their business model around supporting their software. You don't pay for the OS you pay for their help when stuff breaks. I think this is pretty fair to both users and developers alike.

Most copyright licenses are designed to make it painless to write, use, and modify code while preventing the concerns that you've pointed out. That said make sure you choose a license that suits your needs, and be careful if the software is for a company because quite often they'll have their own ideas about what sort of copyrights they want to have on stuff that is developed for and by them.

http://http://www.opensource.org/licenses is a pretty good resource for stuff like this.

Good luck.

PeterUK · 07-07-2009, 12:15 PM

Thanks sandman for your reply! you have missed some point in your reply but its okay you got the main idea.

I went to this website (Generic Public Licence)

Quote:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.php

and read all until warranties.

There is not a section that said if you modified a original code you must publish it.

As I matter of facts there is a section for patents which king of advice that is the patent does not allow the GPL licence condition avoid the distribution/redistribution at all.

I think the guy I have spoken have missed the point of GPL. I agree with Sandman about the point of far use. but it does not prevent me from developing a application with I only will use in my company without distributing it. The only bad point I see if in the future the company take off I will not be able to licence the software to a third party as a whole. But I will have to agree if I make money selling the software the royalty should be divided from me to the one how has made the kernel, don't you think?

XavierP · 07-07-2009, 02:06 PM

If you modify it and do not distribute it, you don't have to give out the source code. If you do plan to distribute it, you must give out the source code.