Is it ok to open source translated closed source code? I received a library to use in a school project, which is closed source. However, the project itself was programmed in a different language, so I had to translate the original library. Now I want to open source the project. Can I do so without consent from the creator of the original library? Something to note is that the library in question is trivial in its nature: the given library is just another interface, consisting of one simple class, for a graphical library (Java Swing in this case). This question is related to Is it legal to rewrite a Java (OpenJDK) library into another programming language under GPL? but I feel that that answer is inapplicable in this case.
You are creating a derivative work. You are only allowed to do this if the library comes with a license that allows this. If you want to give your derivative work to anyone else, copying it is copyright infringement unless the license allows it. Copying the derivative work and attaching a different license is most likely to be copyright infringement. And if people receive a copy with an open source license that is not justified and rely on it, that’s creating one unholy legal mess for everyone involved and can be massively more expensive than plain copyright infringement. No license means you don’t have permission to do anything with it, not creating derivative work, not distributing it, and certainly not publish it with an open source license.
The Oracle Binary Code License Agreement for the Java SE Platform Products and JavaFX writes: LICENSE TO USE. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement including, but not limited to, the Java Technology Restrictions of the Supplemental License Terms, Oracle grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license without license fees to reproduce and use internally the Software complete and unmodified for the sole purpose of running Programs. THE LICENSE SET FORTH IN THIS SECTION 2 DOES NOT EXTEND TO THE COMMERCIAL FEATURES. YOUR RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS RELATED TO THE COMMERCIAL FEATURES ARE AS SET FORTH IN THE SUPPLEMENTAL TERMS ALONG WITH ADDITIONAL LICENSES FOR DEVELOPERS AND PUBLISHERS. That is, Oracle is giving you permission to use Java for running any program, commercial or otherwise. Google vs. Oracle is not about calling the Java API, but reimplementing it on a new platform. Every computer program runs the risk of violating a third party's patents. That does not depend on the the programming language. Which is more "open source" is not clear cut, it depends on the particular JVM or CLR implementation in question. Mono is open source under the MIT licence, OpenJDK open source under the GPL v2 (with classpath extension).
Assuming none of these terms are defined elsewhere in the contract: A third party is a party (a person or company) that is neither you nor the other party to the contract (here, presumably the company that hired you). Since GitHub is neither you nor the company, it would therefore be a third party, and thus it would in fact violate that contract as written to upload the company's code there. Keep in mind that GitHub is not an autonomous system with no humans involved; it's run by a company of people, many of whom could theoretically access the code in private repositories. That said, from a practical standpoint, most companies aren't going to fire someone for a mistake made in good faith, especially if actual disclosure to any humans is rather unlikely. However, do remember that we don't know the company's rules, what training you may have received, what exactly you uploaded, or what regulatory/contractual rules they must comply with. Any of that could affect their decision-making, so you should take this as a general answer and use your own judgement when applying it to your situation.
Yep, you are. You still need to keep the LICENSE and NOTICE files in the repository, if there were any in your copy of the project. These files contain the terms and conditions for the project, and provide attribution to the original developers. If you're trying to attribute in the UI of your application, you probably should. It's considered courteous and in the spirit of open source as well. This is also related: Do I need to include the full text of the MIT license in the UI of my app?
Yes That is very simple - copyright is an exclusive right that starts automatically with the creation of a copyrightable work. The default situation is that the author has an exclusive rights to make copies of the work and derivative works. If the code is published somewhere by the author but the author has not said anything about its licence or copyrights, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. They have the right to just publish it somewhere, others don't. If you try to contact the author and they don't say anything and ignore you, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. If it's impossible to find the author (e.g. I have certain cases with literary works where it's not clear who inherited the rights after the author died), then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. That being said, certain forms of reuse (recreating ideas, learning from them, etc) would not be a copyright violation. But in general the situation with the author not saying anything is almost the same as the author explicitly stating "all rights reserved, you're not allowed to do anything, violators will be shot" - some specific uses are allowed even against author's wishes (e.g. 'fair use' clauses) but everything that needs their permission really does need their explicit permission.
Is it illegal to ask a company for money in exchange for information on a bug in their software/website? That in itself is legal. Indeed, the company would incur unjust enrichment if it coerced you to disclose your discovery for free. Only if you threatened the company to divulge to others your discovery unless the company pays you, it would be illegal and trigger charges such as extortion (likewise, legislations outlaw the unjustified delivery of programs or instructions for hacking a software/network/etc., although this goes beyond your actual question). Can the company take legal action against me? That seems doubtful, futile, and it could backfire (please note I have not done any research on legal precedents about this). Although the terms and conditions of the website or the End User License Agreement (EULA) of software might prohibit you to reverse engineer (RE)/decompile/etc. the application, anti-RE clauses are unenforceable and the remedies therefor are indeterminate because the sole act of conducting reverse engineering does not subject the company (or third parties) to any losses. The company's decision to take legal action for your discovery could backfire from two standpoints. First, it calls attention to the fact that the software at issue is defective and unsafe. And second, the bug is likely to be detected by someone else anyway, thereby potentially compromising customers' systems.
The lack of a copyright notice is irrelevant, what matters is whether permission is granted. The material cannot be copied, except if the copyright holder grants you permission to copy. However, you might be able to create something legal and satisfactory on your own, because the underlying ideas are not protected. By way of analogy, you cannot copy the Turbo Pascal Numeric Methods library without permission, but you can study the logic of a module and write your own FFT routine. The status of something as &quot;declaring code&quot; is entirely irrelevant to the court's decision in Google v. Oracle. What is relevant to the court's finding of fair use is that the content constituted 0.4 percent of the entire API, and the fact that the copied lines of code are inextricably bound to other lines of code that are accessed by programmers, allowing programmers to bring their skills to a new environment. The court found that he amount of copying was tethered to a valid, and transformative, purpose.
It is reasonable to interpret the statement in their Github repository README.md as a "public domain" license for anything contained there. However, their "usage guidelines" backpedals a bit ("generally are not copyrighted", the misleading implication that content used commercially is subject to restrictions that educational and personal uses are not subject to). Although it is true that works "created by the US government" are not protected by copyright, not everything associated with a government agency is created by the US government. An agency might have a policy that they will not post material that is not copyright-free, there is no practical means of knowing if an item is an actual government work, versus a government-supported or government-hosted work (where copyright is held by someone else). If you trust their implication that all of those items in the repository are indeed government works, then they are free of copyright. I don't know any reason to not believe them, although sometimes the government is wrong and they end up liable big-time for infringement. However... NASA Open Source Agreement Version 1.3 (another copy on a NASA web page) on first glance seems to contradict the "government work" theory. Here, they claim to grant certain rights to users and also impose impose restrictions (including obligatory registration). This does not make any sense for a work that is in the public domain. The license is legally defective in that it fails to fill in relevant blanks (agency name, title of work, URL for obligatory registration). Also notice that the license is only for software. The scope of that license therefore has to be something narrower – it applies only to software, and presumably software that is not "a government work". I have no idea what software NASA could legally give away and is not a government work which is therefore not protected by copyright.