Questions tagged [licensing]

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22 votes
4 answers
656 views

Should we continue to accept software licensing questions?

Our current guidance regarding software licensing can be found here. The current guidance says that a general rule of thumb is that questions answerable by experts in software development are on-topic,...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
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22 votes
1 answer
1k views

When is a software licensing question on topic?

I would like to ask a question about software licensing. The help center says: If you have a question about... ... software licensing and it is not about... ... legal advice or aid It seems like ...
durron597's user avatar
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14 votes
2 answers
392 views

Are software law questions off-topic here?

Most of the answers to legal questions here are prefixed with "I'm not a lawyer, but..." I'm beginning to think that including "software law" as on-topic is way too broad, and opens the door to ...
Thomas Owens's user avatar
  • 82.7k
12 votes
3 answers
556 views

I think it's time we just make all licensing questions off-topic

Why? Because all the remaining questions are either crap, or they get closed anyway. Crap questions Most recent questions it seems are either some sort of: Tell me how to follow this license ...
whatsisname's user avatar
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11 votes
1 answer
215 views

Are software licensing questions on-topic for this site, or not? If not, can we make this more obvious?

The answers to this question suggests they are on topic, sometimes. However, the Help Center "on topic" page does not state this type of question is acceptable, and explicitly states that "legal ...
Ian Kemp's user avatar
  • 399
8 votes
2 answers
270 views

Reconciling "no legal advice" and "yes software licensing" [duplicate]

In this question, I had a disagreement with the original asker about whether a legal advice / software licensing question is on topic. I now think that I was wrong when I voted to close originally, ...
durron597's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
212 views

Discussion on if questions about EULA's are on topic

It seems as if there is enough debate about this that I wanted to start a discussion about if EULA's are currently considered on topic, and if they are should they be. Can an EULA restrict what you ...
maple_shaft's user avatar
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7 votes
4 answers
304 views

What is the difference between software licensing and copyright

Over the past months I see that questions regarding copyright on software are receiving close votes, with a custom close reason along the lines of This question appears to be off-topic because it ...
Bart van Ingen Schenau's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
78 views

What is the difference between the "mit" and "mit-license" tags? [closed]

I noticed there are mit and mit-license, but (as both the tags don't have a description) I am not sure I understand when to use one, and when to use the other one. As I noticed there are gpl and lgpl, ...
apaderno's user avatar
  • 4,004
2 votes
1 answer
55 views

Should new off-topic software licensing questions be moved to the law/open source Stack Exchange websites, or deleted?

According to this answer, software licensing questions are off-topic if they cannot be answered by a software engineer. Should off-topic new software licensing questions be moved to the law/open ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
46 views

I'd like to add a licensing tag to a number of Meta questions

Because software licensing is explicitly mentioned in the help center. I think we should have a Meta tag for questions about this issue. Here are some questions that I think would benefit from such a ...
durron597's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
46 views

Someone plagiarized one of my answers. Now what? [closed]

Recently someone commented on an answer I wrote to Difference between 3-Tier architecture and MVC (Model, View Controller) in ASP.Net that they believe a blog post on blog.devgenius.io (a site ...
Greg Burghardt's user avatar
1 vote
6 answers
585 views

Can we put "Software Licensing Questions are off-topic" in the FAQ?

These questions have a number of problems. They are questions about legal issues, and none of us are lawyers. They are proxy support questions for the FSF and other such organizations, who should be ...
Robert Harvey's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
109 views

Popular, detailed, controversial answer on a legal topic deleted. Appropriate?

I was surprised to find that my answer "Reports of GPLv3 and AGPLv3 "virality" are greatly exaggerated" for the question "AGPL - what you can do and what you can't" was deleted -- the first time a ...
Lutz Prechelt's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
183 views

Software Law definition

How can we define what is good or what is wrong about software law here? This issue came from this question closed as off-topic. The best way to explain the problem with that question would be: "What'...
Maniero's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
135 views

Question regarding license violation?

I came across a non-commercial software which is closed source and packages a GPL licensed library. So I had to ask a question in that regards. So should it me SO or Programmers? Can I question the ...
Bleeding Fingers's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
52 views

Would a "how to choose the best OSS license"-type question be appropriate for PSE?

The answers I would except would describe the most popular licenses with bullet points (e.g. allows commercial use or not, viral or not etc.). I know this is more of a wiki-type thing, but SE is ...
Tamás Szelei's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
67 views

"How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?" - canonical dupe for license shopping?

While pondering upon today's usual license shopping request I discovered this old question: How can I compare and contrast open source licenses? Would it make sense to make above a canonical ...
gnat's user avatar
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