Open Source Software

[Fat Elvis]

How does licensing work with open source software? Can you make modifications to the code (and share that code with the open source community) and then repackage/rebrand that software as long as you acknowledge that it is opensource?

I'm just wondering how companies like Red Hat and whatnot made money.....

[vailpass]

I don't see the draft or poop or antifreeze mentioned anywhere FatE.
What's your point?

[jAZ]

Selling support services like training, installation, management, hosting, administration, etc.

[jAZ]

https://www.redhat.com/wapps/store/catalog.html;jsessionid=HrmUxS7pz1uP+lZC5016bQ**.4b748952

[Fat Elvis]

Can you sell proprietary software by improving the open source software or making the software industry specific?

[KC Jones]

There are different types of licenses out there, so it all differs license to license.

[AustinChief]

There are different types of licenses out there, so it all differs license to license.

exactly... two of the most common are GPL and BSD... GPL-no commercialization... BSD-allows you to commercialize future versions...

good article on those two most popular licenses... http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/article.html#BSD-ADVANTAGES

[jAZ]

Can you sell proprietary software by improving the open source software or making the software industry specific?

It's complicated and over my pay grade. But one way around things is to go the SAAS (software as a service) model which means you use the open source tools as a platform to build a website and sell access to it as a service (whatever your software would have done) but you sell access to that service.

Don't know if that's viable with what you have in mind, but it's pretty common anymore.

[Fat Elvis]

There are different types of licenses out there, so it all differs license to license.

XXXXX is dual licensed under two open source licenses:

the Eclipse Public License v1.0 (EPL), which is available at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html , and the GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPL), which is available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html.

For licensees that wish to distribute XXXXX, modify the source code, and/or build extensions, the EPL can be used to maintain copyleft of the original code base while encouraging innovation with commercial and other open source offerings incorporating XXXXX.

At the same time, for licensees that are concerned with incompatibility between the EPL and GPL, we are providing the LGPL as an option to license XXXXX

[KC Jones]

Great, now that you know what licenses are involved you can read them and figure it out :D

I don't know shit about EPL, and it's been years since I looked into the LGPL, but as I recall it was reactionary license created out of fear of the viral possibilities of GPL. Odds are you aren't going to be able to straight up sell modifications to that code base. GPL was created to force people to give back their enhancements to the community.

[Fat Elvis]

Great, now that you know what licenses are involved you can read them and figure it out :D

I don't know shit about EPL, and it's been years since I looked into the LGPL, but as I recall it was reactionary license created out of fear of the viral possibilities of GPL. Odds are you aren't going to be able to straight up sell modifications to that code base. GPL was created to force people to give back their enhancements to the community.

The GNU GPL website seems to say that the software could be distributed; I might have to pay a fee to the original authors, though....

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html