Timeline for Can I use GPL software in a commercial application
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
44 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 12, 2021 at 6:05 | comment | added | quickly_now | So how do you do this when shipping an embedded widget thats the size of USB stick and uses open source code? Do I include another USB stick with it, with the source code on? And are customers prepared to pay the additional cost of that being included in every product shipped even though 90% of them will throw it away? | |
| Jul 9, 2021 at 19:22 | comment | added | gnasher729 | Hasn’t been mentioned, but if you don’t fancy having to give source code to random people: If you enclose the source code with every single distribution of your software, then you have no other obligations. That way you create only once what you want to distribute. | |
| Jul 9, 2021 at 9:46 | comment | added | Stack Exchange Broke The Law | @quickly_now Maybe it is unreasonable because you could have put the source code on whatever you shipped to begin with. Or on your public web server. It is not the customer's fault that you have made your process unnecessarily difficult for yourself. You don't get to put the code in a locked vault at the bottom of the ocean, throw away the key and then charge the customer $30000 to hire a professional dive team and safe-cracker. Charging for the CD and postage and some labour is reasonable but you can't artificially inflate your costs. IANAL. | |
| May 11, 2021 at 23:35 | comment | added | quickly_now | David Geismar - there are various legal actions have been taken around the world, for GPL violations. Many are settled out of court so "make available" may still be ambiguous in law. Neverthess, it seems to be fairly widely accepted that "make available" means that you either publish the source, or provide it upon request. Effectively, it has a pretty wide applicability and trying to weasel out of "make available" with clever words is unlikely to end well. | |
| Apr 13, 2021 at 6:57 | comment | added | David Geismar | What does making available mean ? This answer seem to say that "making available" has very little practical meaning though | |
| Mar 13, 2019 at 15:33 | comment | added | Manish Kumar | I am using ejabbered instant messaging server and its GPL. if i created a mobile chat app using this will i have to open sourced my whole project code? | |
| Nov 24, 2018 at 8:44 | comment | added | dtech | It is OK to wipe your hands clean of liability that your legal advice shouldn't be taken for granted, but neither should your advice on who can and can't give proper legal advice, unless you are central or professional authority on the subject ;) Are you qualified to qualify who is qualified? I'd personally word that disclaimer of yours a bit more carefully. | |
| Nov 24, 2018 at 8:40 | comment | added | dtech | The properness of an advice depends on the competence behind it. And competence goes beyond labels people put on things ;) Granted, an experienced lawyer who has practiced sufficiently in the field of IP and licensing is significantly more likely to produce a good advice than someone else, but that's a rather specific condition. Being a lawyer is just a profession, it is not some form of divine authority. And again, there is absolutely no guarantee that a lawyer's advice is proper or able to hold up in court, and that a non-lawyer's advice cannot make a legal case. | |
| Nov 24, 2018 at 4:02 | comment | added | quickly_now | @dtech: Not a very good comment. "Any advice you get here (from me or anyone else)should be treated fairly carefully. Only a lawyer can give you proper legal advice." is known as a DISCLAIMER. I'm not claiming to be a lawyer. A lawyer might know, or not. OR might give good advice. Or not. But don't interpret what I say (OR ANYONE ELSE COMMENTING HERE) as being legal advice. It isn't. | |
| Nov 20, 2018 at 12:48 | comment | added | dtech | Only a lawyer can give you proper legal advice. not really true, nor is there any guarantee that a lawyer advice will hold up though a legal case. Anyone competent on the subject can give a proper advice, and no proper advice is guaranteed to be immune to legal interpretations or court interests. | |
| Apr 18, 2018 at 3:56 | comment | added | Stack Exchange Broke The Law | @Petah If someone else writes the syntax highlighter, that has no effect on your program. (The other person would not be allowed to distribute their highlighter together with your program) | |
| Feb 4, 2018 at 2:29 | comment | added | quickly_now | Yes, by all means read that reference. It clarifies things. If you use pipes or other RPC mechanisms then you are probably not touched by the GPL. Making function / library calls in the same address space (even as run-time binding) then you are touched by the GPL. | |
| Sep 23, 2017 at 12:22 | comment | added | Sámal Rasmussen | This answer is incomplete. There is a way to include gpl software in your own software, and be to distribute it without having to make your own software gpl. See the official gpl faq on the gnu website on the topic of software aggregates: gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation | |
| Oct 4, 2016 at 8:00 | comment | added | quickly_now | @AaronLS - agreed. You need to read the specific license, however GPL tends to be far more embracing than LGPL, for example (or for that matter many other open source licenses). | |
| Oct 4, 2016 at 7:58 | comment | added | quickly_now | You need to read the license terms of PHP. You can find those here: php.net/license/3_01.txt PHP is not governed by the GPL. When using open source s/w, reading the license is important. | |
| Oct 1, 2016 at 16:25 | comment | added | Ramesh Pareek | @quickly_now, So, do you mean if php is open-source, Every php based application MUST be open-source? | |
| Jun 1, 2016 at 16:24 | comment | added | AaronLS | How are you interpreting "If I use GPL software in my application"? There's a huge difference between referencing a library and not changing or including any of their source code versus integrating it such that your own work becomes a derivative work. It is probably worth clarifying. I think the first statement is open to misinterpretation. | |
| S Oct 15, 2015 at 18:49 | history | suggested | Mark Amery | CC BY-SA 3.0 | removed some unhelpful noise |
| Oct 15, 2015 at 18:27 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Oct 15, 2015 at 18:49 | |||||
| Feb 18, 2015 at 19:53 | vote | accept | Petah | ||
| Feb 18, 2015 at 19:53 | history | bounty awarded | Petah | ||
| Feb 15, 2015 at 15:35 | comment | added | Fabio Marcolini | @TheLQ Yeah right... Fantastic... :/ | |
| Jan 27, 2015 at 6:37 | comment | added | quickly_now | @Deduplicator: One could of course put things on a public server. But remember it needs to be kept up to date (that is YOUR OBLIGATION), which means means that you need to have a PERSON regularly snapshot and/or separate things from your source control (after all you don't want public access to your entire proprietary source control do you?). Every change needs to be reflected into that public link thing. See... nothing is free. | |
| Jan 27, 2015 at 6:35 | comment | added | quickly_now | @Aquarius Power: Grey area. Perhaps it is OK. I am not a lawyer. I suggest you get legal advice. | |
| Dec 14, 2014 at 19:08 | comment | added | Deduplicator | @quickly_now: So, there is a good reason to put it on a public server, so the first person can just send the link and be done with it. | |
| Dec 14, 2014 at 14:25 | comment | added | Aquarius Power | and if the Closed Source Application (CSA) makes a system call to the GPL application, the same way we could do in the command line, manually, with parameters? But that call is so important that the CSA requires it to work. So, the GPL application is NOT a library. The CSA is NOT dynamically linking to the GPL application as lib. But, the CSA is, at runtime, on the user machine, making the GPL application create some output in a specific/predethermined way, very often. Do the CSA is forced to make its sources available? (I can make a new question with all I am thinking if it seems better too). | |
| Nov 25, 2014 at 2:25 | history | edited | quickly_now | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 91 characters in body |
| Jul 21, 2014 at 9:07 | comment | added | quickly_now | I worked out a long time ago there is no such thing as free, and no such thing as a 5 minute job. Every distraction, every task has a cost - both in doing it and in opportunity cost. Example above, task is about 30 - 45 mins of human effort consumed. Opportunity cost effectively doubles that. Calling it about an hour is roughly right for most people most of the time. If you seriously think these kind of tasks can be done for free, you'll winder why your boss is always bleating about cost overruns too. | |
| Jul 21, 2014 at 9:04 | comment | added | quickly_now | Lets see... in a real company with real people, every person has to be paid. So follow the steps. Mail or email comes in. Somebody has to read it. And then think and figure out what to do with it. Allow 5 mins. Send on to the person who actions it. Person who actions it takes 5 mins as well. Gets up, goes to cabinet, gets CD. Puts in drive. (another 5 mins gone). Finds stuff. Burns. 5 .. 10 mins. Takes out CD. Puts it cover. Finds padded bag. (5 mins). Addresses bag (after finding address... email dude asking). Seals bag. Walks to mail drop. Mail picked up by employee... count every true cost. | |
| Jul 16, 2014 at 6:50 | comment | added | Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI | How in sanity's name does something that should in any reasonably set up version control system take about five seconds plus the time to burn a CD if you're going to be old-fashioned about it take "about an hour" ? | |
| Jun 22, 2013 at 1:21 | comment | added | quickly_now | Re "reasonable handling fee". I once worked for a company required by GPL to distribute source code. Our handling fee was US$150, because to handle the request, gather the code from an archive (at latest revision), process paperwork, and email or burn a CD would take about an hour. At commercial engineering rates, the cost + opportunity cost was actually closer to $300 for that hour. So $150 was cheap. We still got shouted at for being "unreasonable". Most of those who criticise "reasonable" don't have much understanding of actual commercial costs. | |
| Jun 22, 2013 at 1:18 | comment | added | quickly_now | OK point taken you can't distribute a photocopy. In the interests of keep the comments meaningful I won't update the original answer. | |
| May 21, 2013 at 14:12 | comment | added | Brian | Note that charging an "reasonable" handling fee is not a strong deterrent to people interested in your source code; the first recipient of your source code can choose to legally provide others with your source code. | |
| Feb 13, 2013 at 15:58 | comment | added | John R. Strohm | GPLv2 requires you to make available the machine-readable source code. GPLv3 says, in part, "You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License...". In other words, offering a photocopy of the source listing is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. | |
| Feb 13, 2013 at 12:06 | comment | added | JesperE | The spirit of the GPL is to guarantee that any and all users of your program has the same rights to modify the program as you have. The "infectious" nature is a result of preventing users from distributing your code in a way which deprives users from the right to modify the program. If you distribute a plugin under GPL to a program which is not GPL, I don't think that would cause any trouble. The non-GPL program cannot be redistributed with your GPL:ed program, but that is hardly your problem. | |
| Feb 27, 2011 at 1:06 | comment | added | quickly_now | @bhadra: I think section 2 of your link is pretty clear: 2. "You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: ... b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." <<-- NOTICE use of "must". | |
| Feb 26, 2011 at 12:46 | comment | added | user1249 | If the question has been asked several times, then why is this not a duplicate? | |
| Feb 26, 2011 at 12:38 | comment | added | bhadra | "it probably would violate the license to supply the source code as a photocopy" - In addition to what mipadi has stated it should be noted that section 3 of gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html explicitly mentions about "machine-readable source code" and "complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code". IANAL. TINLA. | |
| Feb 26, 2011 at 12:28 | comment | added | bhadra | "Got to love the GPL: Force everything that touches it to be open source" and "The GPL is like a virus: it infects everything it touches." - These are not necessarily true. Refer section 2 of gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html. IANAL. TINLA. | |
| Feb 12, 2011 at 23:48 | comment | added | quickly_now | @Petah: The GPL is like a virus: it infects everything it touches. If you provide a generic interface and you allow a user to install various components of their choosing, you MAY get away with not being contaminated by the GPL. HOWEVER, supposed you gave your stuff away and somebody else were to bundle the 2 together... then it would look like your stuff would be touched by the GPL. You have a very difficult situation no matter how you try and wriggle around it. | |
| Feb 12, 2011 at 18:49 | comment | added | mipadi | Just a note: it probably would violate the license to supply the source code as a photocopy. As noted in the license: "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." | |
| Feb 12, 2011 at 15:33 | comment | added | TheLQ | Got to love the GPL: Force everything that touches it to be open source | |
| Feb 12, 2011 at 14:19 | comment | added | Petah | So what if my framework provides an interface for a syntax highlighter, and some one implements that interface using GeSHi. What effect does the GPL have on my framework in that case? | |
| Feb 12, 2011 at 13:40 | history | answered | quickly_now | CC BY-SA 2.5 |