Licensing Agreement

[OrangeHopper]

I have just received the following comment regarding the parser generator I distribute free through parse.com.

Since you don't have a licensing agreement on your homepage, we're not allowed to use your program, even if you say it's free.

Can anyone shed any light on what might be going on here?

[Nicely Nicely]

They have a paranoid or public sector employer to whom they have to prove they are allowed to use 'free' software.

Without a licence saying they can use it, they cannot prove they are allowed to.

[northernladuk]

Ok forget that didn't read it properly.

Maybe they are not reading the bit on your download page.

Possibly they are thinking that the fact there is NO agreement is bad. They don't know what you are going to do to them if you suddenly put one up? You have to give them permission to use it if that makes sense?

TEll them about the disclaimer on the download page??

[MarillionFan]

To be honest, it sounds like a standard process issue.

I would imagine the NF would know, or would know how to find out. But sounds like what they're saying is, that to comply with some rules/process/legalities (their's or some bodies?) that you must produce a Licensing Agreement document of some kind.

That way they are covered in someway and it's a must.

Thats how I read it. Just pinch someone elses and change it a little is what I would do.

[OrangeHopper]

Thanks for your pointers people. I will do a bit of googling then decide whether I need to add anything to the site.

[The Wikir Man]

Have a look at Creative Commons - they have a range of standard licences which will probably fit the bill.

[Wanderer]

If you create something artistic then you own the copyright to it. It may be made freely available (in the same way as Photoshop is freely available on bittorrent) but if you don't offer a license to the end user then they can't legally use it without violating your copyright.

If the company downloaded it from your website and started using it extensively, you could then come after them and demand that they obtain a license from you. They would much rather get this settled up front before they use the software so they know where they stand.

You have a few options:

You could offer to sell them a license for a reasonable fee. If you do then take legal advice or at least make sure you include a disclaimer of warranty and fitness for purpose in the license. Might be an opportunity to pick up some goodwill and contacts in the company in case they ever need some freelance work done.

Alternatively, have a look at the GNU Public License. This means that people can do almost anything they want with your code (even sell it) but if they modify and redistribute it then they have to release the source code AND release it under the same GPL license. Large parts of Linux are distributed under this license.

You can put the software into the public domain but this isn't such a good idea as someone could take your code, improve it and incorporate it into a proprietary program and then sell it without releasing the improvements back to the community. You abandon your copyright this way.

If you take on a job writing some software for a company then you should also understand what Work for hire is and try to retain the copyright to your software and grant them a license to use it (and perhaps modify or distribute it too).

As a developer then you really need to spend an evening reading up on copyright law and how the various software licenses apply to code you have written.

[NickFitz]

Bear in mind that you can make free software available under several different licenses, and let people choose which one they want to apply to their usage and any derivative works. For example, the jQuery library can be used under either the MIT License or GPLv2.

Wikipedia has plenty of information on free software licenses.

As Wanderer points out, GPL in all its forms requires derivative works to also use it and open their source, which a lot of commercial and governmental organisations aren't overly keen on, so even if you offer the code under GPL you should consider the jQuery approach of allowing an alternative license to be used.

EDIT: The WTFPL might be just the thing you need
(If that link doesn't work on your browser, change the %46 to an uppercase F - I had to get it past the swear filter somehow, but not all browsers play well with percent-encoded characters in the path.)

[The Wikir Man]

EDIT: The WTFPL might be just the thing you need
(If that link doesn't work on your browser, change the %46 to an uppercase F - I had to get it past the swear filter somehow, but not all browsers play well with percent-encoded characters in the path.)

Or use this link instead

[escapeUK]

I have just received the following comment regarding the parser generator I distribute free through

I have to wonder why you care if someone cant use something that is free. Am I missing something?