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Topic: Licensing of 3rd party components (Read 1172 times) previous topic - next topic
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Licensing of 3rd party components

I expect the answers after my last thread about changelogs. But anyway - I am posting this, as this is important.

I would like to kindly ask those, who post their components at http://www.foobar2000.org/components to add VERY brief information about licensing of component. Examples:

License: LGPL v.X
License: GPL v.X
License: proprietary, commercial usage allowed
(or disallowed - as author wishes)
License: proprietary, only private usage allowed
License: proprietary, non restricted usage
License: Creative Commons (type, version)

Of course everybody will ask "WHY you ask for this?"
Because I tend to use foobar on business laptops in company's where I work. And sometimes IT policies are restrictive there.

In my first, small local company that was no problem, as they used pirated OSes and AutoCAD. In Honeywell that was also not a problem, as their IT was too lazy to check it for real. Foobar was not limited for private usage only, so they never bothered to check the plugins. Anyway they tried to deploy iTunes on our laptops using SCCM...  But at the company where I work now, they are really strict about software. And despite it is also multinational corporation, their IT guys are picky about licensing of everything that you use, on every single computer. When they checked that I use "some unknown program" they asked to provide them with personal license or link to license that allows me to use it on business laptop for free and to provide them with link to installer. Further they determined that app relies on 3rd party plugins and... Here we come to the core of the problem. Some authors don't say anything about license, some include it in plugin installer (which may be little bit bothersome to check by IT). I would like to make it clear. Especially any kind of proprietary license should explicitly state if plugin can be used on business machines or not (or if it's only for private use).

Re: Licensing of 3rd party components

Reply #1
I managed to find my old attempt at asking the same question: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,97900.0.html
Peter says that "components are normally expected to show licenses in their about boxes" - which probably does not help you if you have to install it first to see the license.

There is a simple (to end-users) solution for the official repository, if Peter is willing to implement it: anything put there should be permitted to use.  Simplest would be to make those components available under the same terms as the foobar2000 license - would any component developer have any issues with that?

Re: Licensing of 3rd party components

Reply #2
Licenses are such a nuisance. I added a license for my components to my component page.

Re: Licensing of 3rd party components

Reply #3
Thanks Case.

By the way - I just looked at license page of foobar2000 itself, how it looks today, and... Well, it has this nice (...)"as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited t,(...) statement (I copied my favorite part of all these "law-like-sounding" licenses), but I don't know clearly who and under what circumstances can use it. I just suppose that "(...) use in binary form, without modification, are permitted (...)" means that it is totally permitted and it can be used freely by anyone, but I like it more, when it's written like here:
https://cdburnerxp.se/ (first paragraph, last sentence)
http://keyboard-leds.com/ (under first image, right above download link)
or on older version of DVDFab Virtual Drive website for this product - now they have broken their website.

Or on the opposite side (usage restricted for private purposes only):
http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php (first paragraph)
https://www.traystatus.com/Compare/ (scroll down to "License Options")
https://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite (scroll down to graph)
http://lockhunter.com/download.htm

This kind of descriptive text is important especially for any proprietary licenses. For well known and well defined license types it is enough to invoke the name and version (like CC BY 4.0, LGPL v3, GPL v2 - but I think this lat one is impossible to be used for foobar components).

Re: Licensing of 3rd party components

Reply #4
What about this

Re: Licensing of 3rd party components

Reply #5
Honest license :) . And written in a widely understandable language. Not that lawyers-alike hard to read something, that finally leaves you with question "so, what the f*** in the end?"


Re: Licensing of 3rd party components

Reply #7
The problem is, some companies even have problems knowing which is dickish behaviour or not, since they lack a moral spine.

The problem with WTFPL is it lets anyone do literally anything. Which is a problem.