I am the original developer of iText and the CEO of the iText Group. I’m also a Mentor at the Founder Institute. Please take a look at my slides for the session about Startup Legal and IP for the Founder Institute: http://www.slideshare.net/blowagie/startup-legal-and-ip iText is software and therefor copyright law applies: Copyright law allows an author … Read more
There is no reliable licensing algorithm. Really. Not even one. For the most popular, most expensive proprietary software you can buy, you can also find “key generators” and hacked versions that don’t require licensing. Instead of worrying about making it “unbreakable”, just do something simple. A popular mechanism is to, at purchase, ask for the … Read more
Working for a company that takes copyrights very seriously, we are required to put copyright/licence messages in every single file, despite the fact it’s not technically required under US law. I suspect it’s so that, if a file was somehow separated from the product as a whole, it would still be easily identifiable. However, we … Read more
A single one outside the code, please! I don’t know about the others, but I hate seeing the same thing on top of every file. I think I’ve read it a few times, just by page_down-ing through it.
Assume the following: You are developing a server side application in GPL. Now this application serves HTML and not an executable which is directly executed on your machine. That means that another guy could take the GPL code, adapt it and does not necessarily need to publish it. Ie. he can create the identical service … Read more
It seems to me that the chief difference between the MIT license and GPL is that the MIT doesn’t require modifications be open sourced whereas the GPL does. True – in general. You don’t have to open-source your changes if you’re using GPL. You could modify it and use it for your own purpose as … Read more
The page linked to in another answer is a good source, but a lot to read. Here is a short list of some the major differences: internationalization: they used new terminology, rather than using language tied to US legal concepts patents: they specifically address patents (including the Microsoft/Novell issue noted in another answer) “Tivo-ization”: they … Read more