Law Stack Exchange
Law Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [gpl]

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is a free software license, conferring the rights of use, distribution, and modification of the software.

The GPL requires that the program continues to be distributed under the same license, and has been crucial to the development of systems such as Linux.

114 questions
3
votes
1 answer

Is there a license like AGPL for datasets and machine learning models?

The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them…
Jacob Valdez
  • 129
  • 5
3
votes
2 answers

Does FFmpeg LGPL license apply in case if application is using FFmpeg via CLI

Does FFmpeg LGPL license applies when FFmpeg is being used from my application as an external tool, which is being called via command line interface? I do not compile, modify or even include FFmpeg with my application in any way or form. I do not…
Normunds
  • 33
  • 2
3
votes
1 answer

GPL: Does changing makefiles and configurations considered as "modifications"?

I know that editing GPL source code is considered as a "modification", which means all the copyleft rules apply. However, most software includes configuration files and makefiles which you can tweak before rebuilding. Does that count as…
Ryuu
  • 131
  • 1
3
votes
6 answers

Is there a loophole in the GPL allowing binary-only distribution?

I asked this question a long time ago here, which was the wrong place, and got a bunch of conflicting answers from a bunch of non-lawyers. I'm hoping for a more definitive answer here, ideally from some actual lawyers. To be clear, I'm interested in…
Archie
  • 133
  • 3
2
votes
1 answer

GPL and private sale

If a company sells a device containing GPL licensed code they need to provide the source code when asked. Does this apply to private sales, e.g. if I sell an used device that I bought on ebay, would I need to supply the source code when asked? If I…
Dakkaron
  • 318
  • 1
  • 8
2
votes
2 answers

Is it a GPLv3 violation for a project to charge a fee for downloading binaries?

Is it a GPLv3 violation for a project to charge a fee for downloading binaries? Concretely I am wondering about this case: http://moodeaudio.org/ The project is clearly licenced under GPLv3 as stated on the website and uses open source software in…
Loreno Heer
  • 123
  • 4
2
votes
1 answer

Contribution terms for an LGPL Licensed Project

Background: I am making contributions to a certain project which is released under LGPL and also under a commercial license. According to the terms of contribution in the project by doing so I am transferring all my rights and ownership of the code…
user3467349
  • 103
  • 4
1
vote
2 answers

MIT and GPL-3.0 conflicting licence

I am creating a project for myself based off of two different GitHub projects. Code from each of the two projects are used in my project, and I am planning on releasing it to the public. The conflict I face is that the two original GitHub projects…
Greenreader9
  • 163
  • 5
1
vote
1 answer

Does Fat Fritz 2 violate GPL?

Fat Fritz 2 is a chess engine recently published and sold by Chessbase. Release article. It uses the Stockfish binary, and replaces the NNUE in Stockfish with its own. Stockfish itself is licensed under GPL; the text on Stockfish's website…
Allure
  • 2,563
  • 3
  • 18
  • 36
1
vote
1 answer

GPL - Do I have to distribute the source of my changes?

I will be creating a piece of (probably) commercial closed source software. It will be a web game. I hope to use some software that is GPL licensed, like nodejs or express(js). If I make minor changes to these frameworks, mostly to change a small…
Kaiden Prince
  • 121
  • 3
1
vote
1 answer

Are user-space programs designed for modified Linux kernels considered derived works under GPLv2?

The Linux kernel is distributed under the GPLv2 and it seems generally accepted that "user-space programs that use the standard system call interfaces aren't considered derived works" as stated by Linus Torvald on "Re: Linux GPL and binary module…
Come Raczy
  • 113
  • 3
0
votes
2 answers

May I use FFmpeg in my program and what do they mean by making the source code available?

I am currently building a video streaming platform for my school. Because I want to serve videos in different resolutions, I use ffmpeg-static and fluent-ffmpeg. I recently checked the licenses and found that ffmpeg-static is licensed under the GPL…
Green_Lab
  • 3
  • 1
-1
votes
1 answer

Nokia G10 Android kernel source code availability and GPL request procedure

I'm thinking about doing a LineageOS port for the Nokia G10. One part of doing the port is getting access to the Android kernel sources. Since the Android kernel is GPL 2, HMD - the company behind the Nokia phone - is obligated to release it. So far…
k_o_
  • 107
  • 2
-1
votes
1 answer

Can we use GPL3.0 software in our own software?

We're interested in a WordPress plugin available in the WordPress repository licensed with GPL3.0. We'd like to make some modifications, and then use it for a commercial project. Is this legal?
Insight
  • 101
  • 2
-2
votes
1 answer

Any licensing issues with an AGPL Docker container used for integration testing?

Consider a proprietary software service consisting of micro-services that use Amazon S3 for storage. For integration testing I would like to put together a docker-compose file that consists of individual Docker containers for our micro-services and…
Bogdan Calmac
  • 107
  • 2