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Questions tagged [gpl]

The GNU's General Public License, a commonly-used free software license. The GPL has various versions, v1-v3, so use this tag only for questions talking about overarching issues of the licenses or shared characteristics. For example, for a question about a unique section on version 3, use the [gpl-3] tag.

8 votes
2 answers
1k views

Can I host and use modified GPL JavaScript on my website while keeping my main app closed source?

I’m building a commercial web application that runs entirely in the browser. I want to use a JavaScript library that is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL v2 or later). Here’s my plan: ...
simo's user avatar
  • 181
3 votes
1 answer
95 views

GPL-ed and proprietary JS on the same page: "mere aggregation" or not?

Say an individual builds a personal blogging site using Wordpress, with a contact form plugin that includes some JavaScript on the contact form page. This plugin is available, as a whole, under the ...
The-Coder-Who-Knew-Too-Little's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
157 views

How to run license-compliance analysis for R project, FOSSology does not seem to be suitable

If I want to publish an R project on GitHub (not an R package on CRAN) how in practice I can execute license analysis on the code and select appropriate license for the repository? An automated ...
Imsa's user avatar
  • 314
7 votes
1 answer
629 views

SPDX: GPL-2.0-or-later vs the `+` operator

Can somebody explain the semantics of SPDX when it comes to GPL licenses? There is: GPL-2.0 - deprecated GPL-2.0-only GPL-2.0-or-later I don't understand why "Only GPL 2.0" is not ...
Jakub Bochenski's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
1k views

Does presence of a license in source code strictly apply to that source code?

Many licenses (GPL, BSD, etc) include a stipulation that "redistributions must retain this copyright notice and license" and such. This allows a license to propagate into derivative works. ...
TJM's user avatar
  • 289
7 votes
4 answers
1k views

How to release source-code under GPL with exceptions?

I want to release the source code of a profiling/performance analysis library for a platform that doesn't really support dynamic linking. If the library code is modified or used in a tool/library that ...
matthias_buehlmann's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
2k views

Can GPLv3 be used to protect reverse engineered die shots against usage in closed-source projects?

If you are unaware, there are projects to save old hardware by REing (Reverse Engineering) their custom chips into so-called die shots. Basically, the chip is "delayered", photographed under ...
Miro Kropacek's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
134 views

Bare Minima of Licensing under the GNU GPL and the GNU LGPL

What are the bare minima of licensing a program under the GNU GPL and a library under the GNU LGPL?
user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Creating an open-source project licensed with GPLv3

I want to make an open-source project and license it with GPLv3. I have some questions about text I would put in my README and about adding copyright notices. The text is adapted from here. Is the ...
axka's user avatar
  • 131
3 votes
1 answer
393 views

Will web-link deletion be considered modification?

In this question a conclusion was made that any hyperlink deletion from documentation will be considered "change" under Creative Commons terms. This led me to another question. I grab a ...
Fjorvi's user avatar
  • 87
7 votes
1 answer
574 views

Deleting hyperlinks in Creative Commons documentation

There is a package - the license.md file says that all the documentation in the "doc" directory of that package is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Everything outside that directory is ...
Fjorvi's user avatar
  • 87
3 votes
1 answer
565 views

Closed-source licensing of OS with Linux kernel

If you take an operating system, it is always a compilation of different packages. Each of these packages is distributed under a different license. The operating system itself is distributed under an ...
Fjorvi's user avatar
  • 87
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

How should I credit GPL code used as a reference in my AGPL Vue3 project?

I'm working on an AGPL web application that uses Vue3 for the UI. Most of my components are written from scratch, but for some I used a wellknown GPL3 project on Github as a reference (the project ...
Wesley's user avatar
  • 143
5 votes
2 answers
852 views

Releasing code under different licenses. Does this apply to forks of projects?

Ghostscript releases their software under both proprietary and open source licenses. Clearly, you have to pay them to use their software within your software, if it does not comply with the terms of ...
ZeroPhase's user avatar
  • 153
4 votes
1 answer
46 views

Can I distribute a proprietary plugin using a BSD SDK, if it's used in a GPL program?

I am thinking of writing a small proprietary plugin using the VAMP SDK. VAMP is licensed under BSD and the authors specifically state The entire SDK is published under a very permissive BSD-style ...
Nils Werner's user avatar

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