Hi All,
I am planning to build and sell a proprietary commercial application using the GeoServer WMS and WFS services.
Do my code need to be GPL ?
I also plan to distribute GeoServer with my application setup. Will I need to GPL my code ?
–
Thanks and Warm Regards
Debasish Sahu
–
Thanks and Warm Regards
Debasish Sahu
Debasish Sahu wrote:
Hi All,
I am planning to build and sell a proprietary commercial application using the GeoServer WMS and WFS services.
Do my code need to be GPL ?
If you are just using the standard WMS and WFS services I believe you do not need your code to be GPL.
I also plan to distribute GeoServer with my application setup. Will I need to GPL my code ?
I believe that if you are distributing GeoServer directly with the application then you do need to GPL your code. But there are ways around this that I've heard of. I don't know specifically how they work, but I think if you have the installer pull it in on its own, or have people download a separate package then it might be ok. But I'm not a lawyer.
Another option that we've discussed before is being able to dual license GeoServer. See http://geoserver.org/display/GEOSDOC/8+Licensing and http://geoserver.org/display/GEOSDOC/Contributor+Agreement
We never quite finished up everything needed for it, and it's been awhile since we discussed it, so the community's thinking may have changed. But if you'd be willing to pay a license fee to sell a non-gpl version we could get that discussion going again. Our last thinking was that we want to ensure that something goes back to the project. This would start as funding, but for companies that have someone on the PSC, which is an indication that they're clearly contributing back, it would be less money - to give organizations an incentive to contribute more code.
Chris
--
Thanks and Warm Regards
Debasish Sahu--
Thanks and Warm Regards
Debasish Sahu------------------------------------------------------------------------
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