OStatic

By Sunny Gabriel on Jun. 02, 2008

It really depends on what Open Source software license governs the code you modify. If you use a GPL product, you will probably have to open source your system too if you statically link to GPL code. If you use licenses like Apache, Mozilla or LGPL, you will not have to.

If you use GPL and have your application hosted, you will not have to release your code (not 100% certain about v3).

Net-net - you should check the license of the code you are modifying first, and then see how you wish to 'distribute' your application.

By Jean-Pierre Gregoire on Jun. 03, 2008

Thanx for that response.

To be more specific - using Wordpress, MySQL and php I hired a team of developers to create a Community website system.

You can view it here:

http://www.ilovekelowna.com/

Now I want to license out this app to other communities.

What has happened is that one of the developers has taken all of the programming which I paid for and is calling it his own and is licensing my app to others.

Any opinion on this?

Thanx

By an anonymous user on Jun. 03, 2008

I'm scared of this happening to me. I'm not a developer and at one point was thinking about hiring a developer to build some plug-ins for me, but they are charging outrageous amounts. If I paid what they were asking I would like to be able to sell these plug-ins to the WP community to make up some of my cost.

By Peter Brook on Jun. 03, 2008

Wow - that is just thievery. If you contracted developers out to do the work, you own all the IP. They cannot make the decision to 'open source' it on your behalf. You can open it out on your own if you choose, and if you offer it as a hosted solution, you don't have to release the code. If you offer it as an installable offering, you might have to open source certain things, but regardless - your developers should never be able to take YOUR code and sell it as theirs.

What kind of contract do you have with your developers? You can have a lawyer send them a cease-and-desist letter, and a request to hand over all funds for basically stealing your work.

By Jean-Pierre Gregoire on Jun. 03, 2008

Thanx for the replies - it as I thought - my plan is to offer the Community Website coding as a hosted solution for sure, so I guess I should now get legal advice on how to proceed.

Thanx again and any other points of view would be greatly appreciated.

By Peter Brook on Jun. 03, 2008

If you offer a hosted solution, none of the apps you have used need to be open sourced. Only GPL 3 (I believe) requires you to adopt the 'ASP' rule, wherein you have to release source code if you host your solution. For other licenses, you are 'using' the code and you do not have to release anything into Open Source (you may still want to, but that is a different discussion).

Yes, you should definitely contact a lawyer and go after these cheats!