[License-discuss] Using opensource in a company not in the software business

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

Cindy advice is best but the quick and dirty answer for you given the two things you stated:

  *   We do not modify or enhance the open source code of the used libraries.
  *   At last, our code must be kept as proprietary and we don’t consider providing the source code using the opens source libraries.

Good:  Apache, BSD, MIT and other permissively licensed open source code.

Maybe Good:  LGPL, MPL and weak copyleft licensed open source code.

Not Good:  GPL and any strong copyleft licensed open source code.

Review your code base and anything that used GPL source code in an Android/iOS app or Windows/MacOS/Linux program is an issue.  On your internal server if you used any AGPL code it may be an issue.

Your normal lawyer should be able to find you an IP lawyer but you might as well start going over your code base.

Regards,

Nigel

From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss-bounces at opensource.org>> on behalf of Cinly Ooi <cinly.ooi at gmail.com<mailto:cinly.ooi at gmail.com>>
Reply-To: "cooi at theiet.org<mailto:cooi at theiet.org>" <cooi at theiet.org<mailto:cooi at theiet.org>>, License Discuss <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Date: Monday, November 28, 2016 at 7:51 AM
To: License Discuss <license-discuss at opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Using opensource in a company not in the software business

You _are_ in the software business.

The correct person to evaluate your case is your lawyer.

As Woolley said, regardless of which the license of the software you choose uses, you still have responsibility under open source license, and your customers have expectations as provided for by the license.

It is the same whether it is open source license or close source license

Your lawyer will look at each license you need to use and apply it to see whether it meets your business objective.

Another good place to start is to see is there any local people who can talk you through it for the price of a coffee. However, your lawyer has the final say.


Best Regards,
Cinly

*****
“There should not be an over-emphasis on what computers tell you, because they only tell you what you tell them to tell you,” -- Joe Sutter, Boeing 747 Chief Engineer.

On 28 November 2016 at 10:23, FREJAVILLE Etienne <etienne.frejaville at coface.com<mailto:etienne.frejaville at coface.com>> wrote:
Hello,

I'm sorry for asking a question that has probably been answered in the past, but I couldn't find a clear and precise answer on the subject on your website or any web resource.

We are a private company and we wonder how to deal with developments using open source.

First of all we are not a software company, and therefore we just provide software applications to our customers, so that they can use our services/buy our products.

We develop with code that may use opensource, both:

- 1. Pure internal software
- 2. Software for our customers provided as Web applications (that obviously interacts with a part of our internal software).
- 3. Software for our customers provided as mobile applications (IOS&Android apps) that interacts with a part of our internal software.

The usage we make of opensource, is either use the opensource products as standalone products (e.g Maven, Kados..), or use them ‘as is’ as libraries (most java or javascript) (e.g POI, jQuery...).
We do not modify or enhance the open source code of the used libraries.
At last, our code must be kept as proprietary and we don’t consider providing the source code using the opens source libraries.

I have read quite a few pages on the opensource.org<http://opensource.org> website, the FAQ and other external papers, but it seems that the licences discussions and restrictions, concern most of the time the usage of the open source in commercial products, or concern the distribution of open sources modifications.

First of all, I would like to know if a software provided to our customers in our case, is considered in the open source terminology as a 'customer product'.
Second, I would like to understand what 'distribution' stands for. Is distributing a web application or mobile application considered 'distribution' ?
We provide some binary code that may contain usages of open source libraries, to some of our subsidiaries. Is it also considered as 'distribution' ?

The idea behind these questions is to know if in fact we have to care about using Open source software or not in our situation..

If indeed we provide a commercial product and we are considering distributing software that may require the usage of opensource libraries for being able to work, indeed, I guess we are concerned by Open source usage.
If it's the case, I will have more precise questions regarding the usage we make of these libraries, to understand what licences we may use and what we may not.

Thank you.
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