Licenses - Livecode Community

[AgentItay]

Hello everyone,
I am planning to release something I developed using Livecode community, what should I include in my .zip file? Only my .exe file (of course ) my .livecode file, this thing of the GNU license (edited to my needs of course)

Code: Select all

 <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
    Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

And that's it? (Also, I can see that it says " and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found." Should I direct them to this? (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html) or should I include another text file in my .zip folder including the entire text here (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html)? Thanks in advance and sorry for all of those questions, that's my first time to release an application, and licenses issues are the last thing I want to run into. )
P.S: Not sure if that's the right subforum, so sorry for that.

[Mark]

Hi,

You should exactly what the license files state and nothing else. Where it says "and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found." it really means just that. Include the copyright line and don't point elsewhere. If you don't understand what to do, the safest option is to just include all license and read me files that are in the LiveCode distribution.

I think there are quite a few discussions about this subject here on the forum. Please, use the search field to find more information.

Kind regards,

Mark

[jacque]

Most of the open source software I see contains the full text file of the license. You can just drop it into the folder with your other source files.

[AgentItay]

Thanks.
Is it mandatory to share my source code?

[Mark]

Hi,

No, it is not mandatory to share your code, but if you use the open-source (community) version of LiveCode, it is mandatory to offer your. That's a subtle but important difference.

In many cases, people have no need for the source code. Companies who ask for an in-house solution and individuals who need a custom-made application often don't need the source code and are only interested in you providing them with the service of creating and maintaining the software. This is the main activity of my own company.

By including the open-source license, you already offer the code. Someone reading the license knows that the developer can be asked for the source code. Note, however, if your customer decides to redistribute the software to a third party, this third party can ask you for the code and you have an obligation to deliver. Therefore, your customer may choose to not redistribute the application.

If you have created a commercial application and you sell this commercially to a (large) public, you have an obligation to offer the source code. In this case, I believe it would be correct to offer the source code for download on the same website as the commercial product. However, you don't have to offer the source code as a download and you can decide to send it by e-mail for instance.

Here's an article with respect to MySQL. This article applies to all products published under GPL 2. In short: there are surprisingly many cases where a) you don't have to provide the source code immediately and b) you don't have to pay for using the software.

The article has been extensively discussed in the LiveCode community, so I won't be discussing the same subject again. If you have questions, please add yours to the comments under the article.

Kind regards,

Mark

[AgentItay]

Hi,

No, it is not mandatory to share your code, but if you use the open-source (community) version of LiveCode, it is mandatory to offer your. That's a subtle but important difference.

In many cases, people have no need for the source code. Companies who ask for an in-house solution and individuals who need a custom-made application often don't need the source code and are only interested in you providing them with the service of creating and maintaining the software. This is the main activity of my own company.

By including the open-source license, you already offer the code. Someone reading the license knows that the developer can be asked for the source code. Note, however, if your customer decides to redistribute the software to a third party, this third party can ask you for the code and you have an obligation to deliver. Therefore, your customer may choose to not redistribute the application.

If you have created a commercial application and you sell this commercially to a (large) public, you have an obligation to offer the source code. In this case, I believe it would be correct to offer the source code for download on the same website as the commercial product. However, you don't have to offer the source code as a download and you can decide to send it by e-mail for instance.

Here's an article with respect to MySQL. This article applies to all products published under GPL 2. In short: there are surprisingly many cases where a) you don't have to provide the source code immediately and b) you don't have to pay for using the software.

The article has been extensively discussed in the LiveCode community, so I won't be discussing the same subject again. If you have questions, please add yours to the comments under the article.

Kind regards,

Mark

Thanks Mark.
Do I need to make my code clear by adding comments?
I am not used to add comments and I never do, I don't like doing it because I understand my code, but if someone requests my source code, he will probably want comments.

[Mark]

Hi,

The license doesn't say that you need to add comments. It would probably clarify a lot if you just read the license once.

Please, don't cite the entire message you're replying to, if that message is the previous message.

Kind regards,

Mark