What you can do with my projects basically depends on two things:
-
What ist the license the project provides?
-
Do I (Christoph Rüegg) own all rights,
so I could dual-license it with another license, and e.g. sell a commercial license
without copyleft if required?
You can always use the projects according to the terms of the provided free license,
if there is any. See below for more details about what you can do and what you can't
with a specific license. Remember that opensource is NOT public domain, be aware
not to infringe the copyright (see also gpl-violations.org).
Buy a commercial license
In some cases the provided license may not match your needs, e.g. because of company
policies, because you can't affort to apply the copyleft to your derived work, or
simply because the provided license is not compatible to your own license.
If I do own all the rights of the project (or am able to track down all owners and
arrange with them), I'm looking forward to sell you another license with different
terms for an appropriate price. Please contact
me if you're interested.
Accept the provided free license
The following list provides an overview of the core concepts of the licenses I use
in my projects. All used licenses are standard licenses and well accepted to be
opensource (other than licenses like Microsoft Shared Source License or the Sun
Community Source License that are both not opensource). You'll find effectual license
terms on the website and distributions of each project.
-
The project will always be available under the GPL. I can not revoke
this license.
-
You can use (but not distribute/publish!) it without restrictions.
-
You can redistribute the unchanged project freely, as long as you provide
a copyright notice.
-
Anyone who get's a copy of the project automatically gets a free GPL license
from me to use it. But I'm not required to give you a copy!
-
You can not distribute/publish it under another non-GPL license. (But I can,
if I own all rights.)
-
You can not distribute/publish it in a combined work together with an incompatible
license.
-
You can distribute/publish derived works (e.g. changed code, or programs linking
to this library or project) freely, as long as you provide a copyright notice and
provide a free GPL license for the complete derived work. However,
you're not required to publish your derived work! You're not allowed to
link to this library from proprietary closed-source applications!
-
If you distribute object-code under the GPL, you have to ensure that the complete
source code is adequately available, in a form that allows any experienced developer
to change and rebuild the project.
-
You are not allowed to curtail a licensee's right that is granted by the
GPL (so you can't enfore e.g. an NDA).
-
There are no restrictions on creations not depending on this project.
-
The project will always be available under the LGPL. I can not revoke
this license.
-
You can use (but not distribute/publish!) it without restrictions.
-
You can redistribute the unchanged project freely, as long as you provide
a copyright notice.
-
Anyone who get's a copy of the project automatically gets a free LGPL license
from me to use it. But I'm not required to give you a copy!
-
You can not distribute/publish it under another non-LGPL license. (But I
can, if I own all rights.)
-
You can not distribute/publish it in a combined work together with an incompatible
license.
-
You can distribute/publish derived works (e.g. changed code, or programs linking
to this library or project) freely, as long as you provide a copyright notice and
provide a free LGPL license for the changes you made on the library or project.
However, you're not required to publish your derived work! There is no
restriction on the license terms of any programs linking to this library, so you
are allowed to link to this library from proprietary closed-source applications!
-
If you distribute object-code under the LGPL, you have to ensure that the complete
source code is adequately available, in a form that allows an experienced developer
to change and rebuild the project.
-
You are not allowed to curtail a licensee's right that is granted by the
LGPL (so you can't enfore e.g. an NDA).
-
There are no restrictions on creations not depending on this project.
If you can't accept these license terms, consider buying a comercial license instead.
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