Questions about proprietary

Community Meetups
1

Here are two questions I wonder if any one can give me easy-to-understand lay answers.

  1. If an organization writes a software in Julia and wants to sell this software. Does it need to pay Julia? Is there any difference if this organization is profitable or an NPO?
  2. What if more than just Julia core but also Julia packages are used in this software? I know that it depends on the license of each individual packages. But I wish someone can give me a concise lay answer.

I’m just curious about these questions and could have spent a day on digging into the details of the licenses and all sorts of legal terminologies. But shameful to say - really have no motivation to do that, as I just wish to get a quick answer. Sorry.

2

The Julia language itself uses the MIT license (which is permissive) + optional GPL libraries

But keep in mind that some packages may have different copyleft licenses, so if you want to distribute any of the code along with your proprietary software, you will have to check on their individual licenses.

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3

Thanks a lot for your answers and the links. As a non-native speaker of English, may I ask - permissive here means free of charge?

4

Permissive is a technical legal term in this context. It basically means that you can do whatever you want with it, as long as you acknowledge the original authors. There are many websites online that explain more.

5

Thanks!! To be honest - It is this kind of legal terms really drive me nuts each and every time I attempted to understand what those licenses talk about. `Coz the meaning of some of the most common words appear unfathomable in the context of these licenses.

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6

You can easily find very detailed and understandable explanations, comparisons of various licenses, and discussions of their relative merits online (Wikipedia, FSF).