[OpenLayers-Dev] Regarding licensing

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 10:34:43AM +0200, Lind, Kenneth wrote:
> I am not sure this is the correct list to post this questions but here we go.

Close enough. :)

(Caveats: IANAL, but I am kinda the 'legal guy' on the mailing lists.)

> I wonder about the licensing of the openlayers for using as part in a
> commercial portfolio, is there any limits to what we can do with the
> product regarding using it in customer projects (just to clearify, we
> don???t intend to sell it as a product, just use it with customer
> developed solutions)? 

There are two real conditions to using OpenLayers, from the BSD license:
http://openlayers.org/dev/license.txt .

They boil down to: 
 * Include the OpenLayers copyright notice, in the source or in the docs.
   (This is taken care of for you by our build tools.)
 * Don't use MetaCarta's name as an endorsement.    

The rest of the license is just a legal wrapper around these conditions:
there are no limitations as to what you can do beyond that. (This
includes, for example, the outright selling of OpenLayers, rebranding of
OpenLayers, including OpenLayers in any product, etc.) The license is as
open as we can make it: there should be no legal reason why OpenLayers
can't be used in your project.

> We will of course take responsibility towards the customer regarding
> bugs and support as well as giving code back to the project in any way
> we can. We will also not try to hide the fact that we use openlayers
> and give credit to the developers of this great solution. Is there
> anything else that we should be aware of regarding licensing?

All of those are great *social* things to do, but none of it is legally
required by the license: we always appreciate the help, but we accept it
as much because it is offered freely as for any other reason :) 

I agree that all of these things are valuable, and great for the
community, and we very much appreciate them. I look forward to 

> We don???t have any problem with the bsd license that I am aware of. I
> am just curious if there is any additions to this base license.

There is technically speaking, one minor addition to the BSD license:
the bold on http://labs.metacarta.com/license-explanation.html#license
outlines what it is. However, most legal advice on the BSD license
appears to indicate that this technical change (adding these words)
actually doesn't change the meaning of the license in any way: it simply
means that the license explicitly states what is thought by at least
some lawyers to be implicit in the license.

This change should not affect your usage of the library in any way. If
you have concerns about it, I can explain further.

> And as a second question. What are the rules for giving code back to
> the project? Anything specific we should consider here, since we are a
> commercial company?

http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/HowToContribute has complete
instructions, which apply to corporations as well as individuals.

We look forward to your continued participation in the community!

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta