Are software licenses copyrighted? If someone wanted to 'fork' a private company's license, could they legally do so? That is to say, if, for instance, the company Grammarly found that significant portions of the company Evernote's EULA was worded better for their own use than the license they had been using, could they copy significant portions of it, legally, for their own use? Sub question: are any or all legal documents copyright?
To answer the question in your title: Yes, software licenses are copyrighted. They are written works that involve (significant, expert) creative effort to create. The best solution would be for Grammarly to hire a lawyer and say "we want a new EULA. We think this one covers a number of points our current one doesn't". Most legal documents will be copyright for the same reason (there may be a few that are so stereotypical that there is essentially no creative effort in putting them together).
Germany may be different, however in the United States this would be considered work-for-hire and the employer would be the rightful owner of the source code. Regardless of jurisdiction, and from a more practical point of view, you are better off not having a copy of the source code. Using it as reference or example in the future could easily turn into (unintentional) copyright infringement. If, in the future, you write code you would like to be able to freely keep and reuse in any project, make sure the owner/employer licenses it using something like the BSD, MIT, or ISC license.
I don't see how. Remember that a license is a contract where the author gives permission to copy (modify, redistribute, remix, etc) a copyrighted work, provided that the licensee fulfills the stated conditions. If the license is not in effect, then we revert to the default situation under copyright law, which is that the potential licensee has no rights to copy the work. (Not counting particular instances of copying which are permitted under fair use and similar exceptions - I presume that's not what you have in mind, or the whole question is moot.) In this case, the conditions include that the licensee must credit the author under their chosen pseudonym. The licensee can't get out of that obligation simply because they find it distasteful or objectionable for whatever reason. If they don't want to do it, then they should not accept the license in the first place, and so refrain from copying the work. (Of course, if the author is offering the CC license in hopes of encouraging reuse of the work, then this may not be a desirable outcome for the author, so they might want to think twice about their choice of pseudonym.) Even if the author's pseudonym were something that would actually be illegal to quote (say, because it is obscene), I don't think it lets the licensee off the hook. A contract with illegal terms is void, so legally it is as if there is no license at all, and we revert to the default in which there is no right to copy. A question was raised in comments about the word &quot;reasonable&quot;. I don't know of case law where this has been tested, so I can only speculate: The context suggests that &quot;reasonable&quot; is intended to refer to the means of attribution (for instance, where the attribution should appear in a piece of source code or documentation), not to the pseudonym. There's a legal principle that the specific governs over the general, and the requirement to credit the author by a particular pseudonym is clearly more specific than the general requirement of &quot;reasonableness&quot;. It seems clear that the author, who is the one offering these terms, didn't intend for the general term &quot;reasonable&quot; to render meaningless their request for the use of a specific pseudonym; if they had, why would they have bothered to put it in? On the flip side, there's the principle of contra proferentem, that ambiguities in a contract should be resolved in the favor of the party that didn't draft it - here, the licensee. But it's hard to argue that this is really ambiguous; it seems quite clear what the author wants. Of course, the author can circumvent the whole issue, if they're worried, by licensing the work instead under a modified version of the CC license in which the word &quot;reasonable&quot; is removed. After all, there is nothing particular magical about CC's language: the contract is whatever the author and the licensee agree to, and they're just using the pre-written CC license as a convenience to streamline their negotiations.
Yes. This is a frequently asked question on the foundation's homepage, and answered without ambiguity (source): Can I use a Raspberry Pi in a commercial product? This is a very common question, and the answer is yes! Once you have bought a Raspberry Pi, it's yours to do with as you wish. You would be in good company too, as in fact the Raspberry Pi is regularly used and sold for commercial applications third parties. Note that this the default consequence of a contract of sale in all jurisdiction I know of (but I am not a lawyer): The seller does not retain property rights in the particular item, and by the mere selling of the item implies there are no other rights that might prevent the buyer from using it as they wish. Apart from the particular computer now in your property, there are other legal requirements: &quot;Copyleft&quot; softweare: Large parts of the Raspbian software are licensed under &quot;copyleft&quot; licenses (importantly, versions of the General Public License, GPL). These licenses are meant to provide your customers with the means of reproduciing and building upon the &quot;copylefted&quot; software. You will need to provide your customers with the source code to those software items, the tools and documentation needed for building, and a written notice. Your own programs need not be licensed under a &quot;copyleft&quot; license, provided that you don't build on (distribute &quot;derative works&quot; of) &quot;copyleft&quot; software. The open source licenses involved are not meant to exclude commercial use, and there are helpful compliance guides available ( a, b ). Non-free software: Make sure to not include non-free software, like Mathematica or Oracle Java, which are not licensed for commercial redistribution. Trademarks: Your use of the words &quot;Raspberry PI&quot; or the raspberry logo is subject to restrictions, as is usual with trademarks. Speaking of the logos: You can request permission to use their &quot;powered by Raspberry Pi&quot; logo. Market regulations: You need to abide by regulations, for example safety and electromagnetic interference. Repackaging the Pi might mean you'll need to test and recertify your product, I'm not an expert. Video codecs: Some Raspberry Pis (up to 3) include specialised video decoding hardware. If you want to use it with the MPEG2 codec, you'll have to buy an activation key for small one-time fee per device - £2.40 for MPEG2, £1.20 for VC-1; other codecs are already activated. I don't think you'll need a license even for commercial, for-sale devices, but I am not your lawyer. Just to be clear, nothing prevents your buyers from cloning your software. (This is not a consequence of you providing the Raspbian source code - they can just clone the contents of your SD card.) While you can retain copyright in your own code, you'll probably have no effective means of detecting infringement. However, the physical design of the rest of your device will not be affected. Your business model needs to account for this fact.
Sure, you can. But if you, from the US, contract with and pay someone outside the US and then use the results of that effort - the reverse-engineered code, either directly in violation of copyright or to find workarounds - within the US, you may not be culpable in a criminal sense (depending on different jurisdictions and trade/IP agreements), but you certainly would be liable in a civil sense. If the US based software developer (I assume a US-based software company, as you said "outside the US") tracks you down, they can open a civil action against you for any damages they want to claim, including theft of IP, loss of profits, EULA violations, and on and on, because you posses and are using reverse engineered code. How much money do you have to lose?
You can licence your copyright under as many licences as you like to as many people as you like It's your copyright - you can do what you want with it. What you can't do is give someone an exclusive licence and then give licences to others - that would be a breach of contract with the exclusive licensee. How you let people know about the available licences is also up to you - your bio on Stack Exchange is fine.
Yes. A license is a legal form of permission to do something (usually, to use a particular property, whether real or digital or intellectual) and the conditions applied to that use. Different licenses for the same property are extremely common, for example, a free license for hobby or non-profit work and a paid license for commercial usage. Other conditions can include the requirement to make the derivative work also available in some manner or to disallow restrictive conditions should the derivative work be licensed itself, even up to requiring the exact same license be applied to all works. Wording the license exactly so that it achieves the goals you intend is the work of a qualified and registered lawyer, and obtaining their services is definitely recommended for this task.
You'll want to read the actual licenses yourself and understand what is required. If you don't understand, then you'll want to consult an attorney. But neither of these licenses are all that complex in my opinion. MIT: Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the &quot;Software&quot;), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Apache 2.0: Redistribution. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions: (a) You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License; and (b) You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; and (c) You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and (d) If the Work includes a &quot;NOTICE&quot; text file as part of its distribution, then any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least one of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or documentation, if provided along with the Derivative Works; or, within a display generated by the Derivative Works, if and wherever such third-party notices normally appear. The contents of the NOTICE file are for informational purposes only and do not modify the License. You may add Your own attribution notices within Derivative Works that You distribute, alongside or as an addendum to the NOTICE text from the Work, provided that such additional attribution notices cannot be construed as modifying the License. Nowhere does either license require you to publish your application's source code, even if your application is directly based on the original code.