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Law Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [open-source-software]

For questions about open source software, which is licensed under an open source license. Generally, the source code is made available, and it provides a set of terms to allow others to use it. You may want to consider asking your question at Open Source Stack Exchange as well.

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Would open source programs that use encryption be illegal under this draft of the "Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016"

The U.S. congress has a draft for a bill that would require companies to fetch information from a device when requested by a court. A consequence of this is that many types of security technology become illegal for any company subject to U.S.…
Christopher King
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Can the Cyber Resilience Act make it illegal to retire?

Suppose Alice develops some software and releases it under an open source licence. She receives just enough money to be counted as "commercial". This may be donations from users, it may be tokens for contributing to a cryptocurrency project, and…
User65535
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Can you host a version of Wikipedia on your own domain and charge for it?

I am reading through these notes, trying to piece together a picture of what the rules/laws are regarding Wikipedia…
Lance Pollard
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Can an open source licence be revoked if it violates employer's IP?

Suppose a developer's contract says that all intellectual property (IP) rights to her code belong to her UK employer. While employed, she develops a library and open-sources it under the Apache 2.0 licence. The employer is not initially informed,…
schrödingcöder
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Why do some licenses have a clause stating that one can't violate the law?

Example of such a clause in the Creative MLOpen RAIL-M dated August 22, 2022 used by runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5: You agree not to use the Model or Derivatives of the Model: In any way that violates any applicable national, federal, state,…
Franck Dernoncourt
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Do I really have to Open Source my project?

I'm currently working on a software which uses another software under the GPL version 3 license: https://github.com/ViaVersion/ViaVersion/blob/dev/LICENSE Now someone just came to me and said I have to Open Source my project or I can get in…
Daniel
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23
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Can a user sell my software (MIT license) without modification?

Basically, I was just wondering if I release a piece of open source software under the MIT license, does that mean that someone could take it and sell it onto people without doing any modification to it?
Majored
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Can I bundle MIT licensed components in a Apache 2.0 licensed project?

I am creating a project that I would like to open source and license under the Apache 2.0 License. The project will come with a bundled version of an open source component which is licensed under the MIT license. Can I bundle MIT licensed components…
Wojtek
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Is it legal to write a software license if I'm not a licensed attorney?

I was hoping to create my own open-source license since none of the existing ones seem to work for what I want. However, someone mentioned to me that in the USA it's illegal to practice law without a license, and that creating a contract is…
Ky -
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How long does a GPL licencee have to respond to a source code request before it becomes a GPL violation?

I have requested source code for a product that contains software licensed under GPL 2. The product includes a written offer to provide source code if you send a written request by email. The offer is valid for three years. But I have gotten no…
Богдан Туренко
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Is WINE illegal?

Is WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) illegal? Given that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held in Oracle v. Google that APIs are copyrightable, is WINE (which reproduces the Windows API) a copyright infringement? Can reproduction…
JoshJordan
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Do copyright notices need to be placed at the beginning of a file?

I'm a student and won't be publishing code any time soon, but I am working on improving the composition of my code. I'm interested in open source and I've only seen copyright notices and license text at the very beginning of files. If I place the…
user25777
14
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Who owns the code when my employer wants something similar to my existing open source project?

I have a similar situation to this question. My employer hired me knowing that I work on some open source projects, but for a long time, showed no interest in my open source projects. Now they want me to work on something similar to one of my…
LincolnMan
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is there (yet) a standard, simple license header that prohibits machine learning?

Is there an SPDX or other widely accepted license header syntax/format that prohibits machine learning? My company's Github license statement includes: "Licensee is not granted the right to, and Licensee shall not ...[use company's open source code…
Jeff Brower
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Is it legal to write software to convert data from a proprietary format?

I have created a piece of software that converts a proprietary format from the database blob of a large, well known commercial software company into the equivalent open source data type. The large commercial software company states the following on…
WorriedDeveloper
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