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Questions tagged [licensing]

For questions about permission and terms to use intellectual property.

878 questions
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Is it legal to copy a software license text from other companies to write my own?

I am writing a software license myself before I hire a lawyer. Is it legal to copy a software license text from other companies to write my own? I could not find anyone talking about the copyright of the software license itself. But many software…
ultrafrog
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Is Stack Exchange allowed to unilaterally change previously published content license?

The original thread can be found here: Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow are moving to CC BY-SA 4.0 As far as I understand, Stack Exchange can move on to CC BY-SA 4.0 for content published in the future, but they are not allowed to unilaterally…
user24671
9
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2 answers

Does MIT license oblige me to publish its code in open sources

I found several libraries on GitHub that I plan to use for a commercial application. They are all licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0. Having studied them, I realized that I can use them for free in development, but does this oblige me to publish its…
Sunbey13
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If no licence is distributed with an application/source code, what license applies by default if any?

If no license is distributed with an application/source code, what license applies by default if any from a legal standpoint? Edit: If bob makes source code. And bob has never placed any license in any code, or released applications. Are people…
Nackloose
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6
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What's the license of a license?

If I were to take license texts of publicy available licenses, such as the WTFPL, to add some paragraphs and create my own license, which I then ship with content created by me, would that be legal? What about AGB's for example? I'm sure companies…
borartr
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Can I use the sound files, generated by the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech freely?

Google sells access to their TTS service at https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/. They advertise that you can use it for free, if you use less than 4 million letters (1 million for WaveNet voices). I couldn't find any information regarding the…
someonr
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4
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3 answers

Oracle vs Google: Can Oracle sue any company who is using Java and making profit?

Lot of companies in the world use Java including the company I work for. AFAIK there is no licensing deal and we use most of the Java packages for which Oracle sued Google. So can Oracle sue any company which is using Java and making profit? If not,…
dejavu
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4
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Is resale of Windows 10 keys legal?

Windows 10 (pro, enterprise, any) that supposedly have never been activated so far are (re) sold online for 5$-20$. I assume that those are key that have initially been given out by microsoft in volumes or in countries with lower pricing (as the…
matthias_buehlmann
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4
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How should code produced by automated tools be licensed?

Say a tool that does some sort of automatic code generation or modification, like a formatter or linter, is run as a service that automatically creates pull requests to projects on Github. Who owns the copyright of those changes? What license…
Jack
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4
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What (combination of) licenses is popular for public/shared proprietary software (“Feel free to contribute, but only we can make commercial use”)?

A software product (a web service) is being developed. In essence, I want the software code to be hosted publicly on GitHub. Anyone should be able view, download, modify, use for personal use, and contribute back with improvements as they want,…
corgrath
4
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1 answer

Am I allowed to lowercase an ALL CAPS section in a license?

Am I allowed to lowercase an ALL CAPS section in a license? Example: The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2015 Andrej Karpathy Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated…
Franck Dernoncourt
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3
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Warranty (globally) on software licenses: Beerware vs BSD-0 Clause, does beerware imply liability?

Hi most FOSS licenses like 0-clause BSD https://opensource.org/license/0bsd/ contain something like this: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES From…
Ludwig Van Beethoven
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Can Wizards of the Coast Deauthorize OGL 1.0a?

Wizards of the Coast, in their draft Open Gaming License 1.2 include the following notice: NOTICE OF DEAUTHORIZATION OF OGL 1.0a. The Open Game License 1.0a is no longer an authorized license. This means that you may not use that version of the…
Spitemaster
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Does watching YouTube's videos at work violate YouTube's Terms of Service

Let us suppose that I am a programmer at a software company. Furthermore, let us suppose that I am learning a programming language that the company is using. Do I violate YouTube's Terms of Service if I am watching videos on YouTube that are…
Marko
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3
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In what cases might you be required to provide proof of purchase of a game asset under a license?

There are some sites that sell 3D assets and textures, and generally other things that can be used in video games or 3D rendering. Some of these sites are Turbosquid, CGTrader, Sketchfab etc. I'm just wondering under what circumstances a video game…
Zebrafish
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