Thank you for the book recommendation. As a startup exploring SaaS ideas using open source almost 90% of the time, I keep thinking about the licensing issues (most projects I use are MIT, GPL, AGPL licensed) and any potential restrictions about what I can or cannot do.
Selling those as-is projects as my own isn't the model. But, bringing together, customizing, adding functionalities and making them easy and useful to users is.
The speak to a lawyer route doesn't work and isn't practical for me. Hope this book gives me some direction to start off with.
The speak to a lawyer route doesn't work and isn't practical for me.
With respect: licensing can be complex, particularly if one is new to it, and the ramifications of messing-up with a licensing issue like this could result in legal action against yourself / your project, at worst.
If speaking with a lawyer is not practical for you, you will need to be 100% certain that you know what you are doing with all of these different licenses, and fully understand their compatibilities / incompatibilities — or at some point you will very probably get bitten by this.
I'm not sure why you say this route "doesn't work". Because it certainly does — of course you would need to find a lawyer who has good knowledge of software licensing.
Comments
Thank you for the book recommendation. As a startup exploring SaaS ideas using open source almost 90% of the time, I keep thinking about the licensing issues (most projects I use are MIT, GPL, AGPL licensed) and any potential restrictions about what I can or cannot do.
Selling those as-is projects as my own isn't the model. But, bringing together, customizing, adding functionalities and making them easy and useful to users is.
The speak to a lawyer route doesn't work and isn't practical for me. Hope this book gives me some direction to start off with.
With respect: licensing can be complex, particularly if one is new to it, and the ramifications of messing-up with a licensing issue like this could result in legal action against yourself / your project, at worst.
If speaking with a lawyer is not practical for you, you will need to be 100% certain that you know what you are doing with all of these different licenses, and fully understand their compatibilities / incompatibilities — or at some point you will very probably get bitten by this.
I'm not sure why you say this route "doesn't work". Because it certainly does — of course you would need to find a lawyer who has good knowledge of software licensing.