Open Source project change license from BSD 3 Clause to Lgpl-2.1 If a software was released under BSD 3 Clause license, how can I rerelease it with my changes under Lgpl-2.1 with Commonsclause? What are the requirements and my obligations? More about later, here: https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-lesser-general-public-license-v2.1-(lgpl-2.1) With https://commonsclause.com/ Goal: I want to rerelase a Bsd-3-clause project with my modifications as Lgpl-2.1 with Commonsclause to make it open, but prevent users from selling it and making SaaS based on the software? Thanks,
While the Commons Clause is not an Open Source license, the BSD license allows you to do this. To be clear, you cannot change the license of other people's code. You can however add your own code and license it under whatever terms you want. The resulting code then consists of your modifications, under whatever license you want parts of the original code, under BSD-3-clause Since you are a license-taker for the BSD-3-clause material, you must still comply with its license such as providing any recipients with the copyright + license notice. When people receive the software with your modifications, they must comply with both your chosen license terms for your modifications, and with the BSD-3-clause license for the other parts. For example, you can use the Commons Clause to prevent certain competing uses of the software as a whole. But since you will presumably provide the source code of the software, other people are free to use the BSD-3-clause code under the terms of that license, ignoring your restrictions. If you provide binaries then the resulting binary would not be covered by the BSD-3-clause license, but you would still have to provide the copyright and license notice for the original code as a kind of attribution.
Yes, commercial use is allowed for the AGPLv3 license. You can charge for your use of the software so long as you provide a way for the public to download the source code in its entirety.
In principle, every single copyright license allows someone to do something that plain copyright law wouldn't allow them to do. Very often there are conditions: They are allowed to do X, which plain copyright law wouldn't allow them to do, but only if they fulfil some condition Y. The consequence is that if they do X without fulfilling the condition Y, then they are committing copyright infringement. Details are different from country to country. In the USA, you cannot force someone to do what the license asks the, to do, but if they don't, it's copyright infringement, and you can sue them and ask for damages. Other countries see it as a contract, where by doing X they agree to do Y as well, and not doing it would be breach of contract. Often with the interesting effect that you as the copyright holder cannot prove that they accepted the license, so in court they can tell the judge whether they were committing copyright infringement or whether they are in breach of contract. You can of course use your own license - however, one of the standard licenses mean the license was likely checked by a better lawyer than you would want to pay, and is much more likely to achieve what you want to achieve. If there were any problems say with the Creative Commons license, people would have found those problems and fixed them a long time ago.
Yes A software license is just a contract and parties to a contract are free to agree whatever terms they wish under the doctrine of freedom to contract. Government can restrict what terms can be used in a contract either in general (e.g. for being against public policy) or specifically (e.g. by requiring wages be paid in money). None of the terms you mention fall foul of any restrictions I know of.
Any adapted work derived from a work used under a CC-BY-SA licnese must be distributed, if at all, under a compatible license. The question is whether a large work incorporating a much smaller work is said to be "based on" that work. The CC-BY-SA 4.0 legal text does not use "include" or "incorporate" or any similar term to define an adapted work, instead it says: Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image. If including a single work makes your book Adapted Materiel, than you must either release the book under the same license, or else not rely on the CC license. I am not at all sure if such use would make the book Adapted Materiel. If the content could be quoted (perhaps only in part) based on fair use or fair dealing or a similar theory, you would not be relaying on the license. But whether such use is legitimate is always a very fact-bound question, which will depend on various specific facts. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for a summary of US fair use principles. If the materiel you want to use would not qualify under fair use (or whatever similar principle applies in your jurisdiction), and the book would be considered Adapted Material, then you would have to omit it or put the book under the CC license. I see in The CC case law page the statement that: The atlas was a compilation not a derivative work, so did not need to be licensed under the SA term, Which might apply to your book. If it does, you would not need to place the book under a CC license. Update: On reading CC's detailed wiki page on Drauglis v. Kappa Map Group, LLC I find the statement that Use of a whole work is suggestive of a "compilation" rather than a derivative work subject to the ND/SA terms. attributed to the US District court (DC district) that decided this case in 2014. If that decision were followed, it would seem that the book would not be considered a derivative work and while proper attribution must be provided, and the applicable license must be indicated, the book itself need not be released under CC-BY-SA.
All the CC licenses permit anyone to use the licensed content, and to make copies of it for others. Some of them permit using it for commercial purposes, others (the ones including the -NC- clause) do not. Some CC licenses permit creating modified versions of the original work (derivative works), others (the ones including the -ND- clause) do not. I do not know of any standard license which allows users to create and distribute derivative works, but not to distribute the original. The license used by Project Gutenberg permits re-use and re-distribution, but if a fee is charged beyond recouping expenses requires the removal of the PG name and logo. One problem is that if derivative works are allowed, this would include works which are only trivial modifications to the original, which would have the effect of allowing distribution of the original. If the main concern is about commercial sales, possibly a CC-NC-SA license would effectively serve the purpose? That allows redistribution, including of derivative works, but forbids commercial reuse or distribution without separate permission, and requires all redistribution to be under the same license. Otherwise a new license for this situation might have to be created. It is often a good idea to have the assistance of a lawyer with IP expertise in creating a new license, or the wording chosen may have unexpected effects or include unintended contradictions. Or one could simply place a basic copyright notice along with text such as "Modified versions may be created only with permission from the author. Request permission at work-permisisons@example.com". However, if the work proves popular, there might be a large volume of requests.
The GPL does not explicitly specify a time within which the source code must be provided, which probably means a &quot;reasonable time&quot; is allowed. What is &quot;reasonable&quot; would eventually be evaluated by a court, if the matter ever got that far. But please note that only the copyright holder (or the holder's authorized agent) can sue for infringement. The license does not give other people a right to sue for infringement, and I doubt that any license could grant such a right. One could inform the copyright holder who could sue, but the holder need not sue, and undertaking such a suit would involve expense, time, and effort. Whether the offer to provide the source constitutes a binding agreement is not clear, and may well vary in different jurisdictions. The question does not state any particular jurisdiction.
Probably Not The creator or owner of a piece of software does not in general have any copyright over the output when others run the software, unless that output is itself a derivative work of input supplied by the copyright owner, or forming part of the software. In this case the translation is a derivative work of the 19th century original, but that is assumed to be in the public domain. SAo google has no copyright on the resulting translation. But copyright protection is only available for &quot;original works of authorship&quot;. (See 17 USC 102 in the US, and similar laws elsewhere.) A machine-produced translation is not an original work, and it is surely not then work of the author of the overall book. However, the author would still have a copyright on the book as a whole. The legal situation is no different than if the author had simply quoted a 19th century work. One may incorporate public domain works into a later work, and that later work is still protected by copyright, provided that there is enough original contentr to make the work as a whole &quot;an original work of authorship&quot;. Others may use the PD [arts, or the original from which they are taken, but not the rest of the work (beyond what fair use would allow in any case). For example, I have made a number of posts here on LAW.SE. In several,of those I quoted sections from one of the numbers of The Federalist. That 19th century work is in the public domain. Anyone else may re-quote the passages I quoted from it. But that gives them no rights to use the rest of my work, except as the CC-BY-SA license or fair use permits. So the author would retain copyright on the book as a whole. But soemoen who merely quotes or uses the translated 19th century article but none of the original parts of the book would not be infringing that copyright. I say probably in the header, because I do not have any actual case-law to cite here. It is possible that some court has rules otherwise on the subject of the copyright on the output of a software tool, but I strongly doubt it.