About licensing

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siva
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About licensing

Post by siva »

I would like to know about licensing my application written in C++ and using wxWidgets.

This is a close source commercial software. Should i get a license by paying fees or this is a free product for commercial development.
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Post by Jorg »

The wxWidgets license allows you to ship your code as closed source, and sell it. Basically what you can't do is make adjustments in the wxWidgets library and claim it your own. Other then that it is very flexible.

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silverkorn
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Post by silverkorn »

So, concretly, it's the same as LGPL except that we are not forced to use the wxWidgets libraries dynamically to a DLL or SO file?

If so, does in this case we may use it statically within the closed source and is it mandatory to state in our licence files/documentations any mention that we are using wxWidgets (without bringing any modification to these libraries)?

Thanks in advance! :D
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tierra
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Post by tierra »

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
silverkorn wrote:So, concretly, it's the same as LGPL except that we are not forced to use the wxWidgets libraries dynamically to a DLL or SO file?
Correct, however, do note that this doesn't mean it's legal to also link GTK itself statically in your application too along with wxWidgets (in the case of using wxGTK), you still need to consider the licenses of any other libraries wxWidgets also depends on given the configuration you've chosen to use. This isn't typically something that requires much thought since wxWidgets has been careful to try to only depend on or include libraries compatible with the wxWindows License (i.e. expat, jpeg, libpng, libtiff, zlib, and tcl/tk regex code), but obviously GTK+ itself is a different story.
silverkorn wrote:If so, does in this case we may use it statically within the closed source and is it mandatory to state in our licence files/documentations any mention that we are using wxWidgets (without bringing any modification to these libraries)?
The license does not require you to mention that you are using wxWidgets anywhere at all (though it would be nice if you did). Additionally, the license also allows you to even make modifications to the library without actually contributing the changes back to wxWidgets or making your source code for those changes available publicly at all either, however, it is still in your best interest if you do so since those improvements can be included in future releases of wxWidgets where you will no longer need to maintain your own set of patches you apply to wxWidgets every time you build your application against a new version.
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Post by silverkorn »

That's pretty great then!

Don't worry, I'm usually the kind of person that shares stuff with people/organisation that helps the world. :D
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Re: About licensing

Post by Louisa »

Thanks so much for so many informative stuff about licensing...so helpful
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Post by random_user »

tierra wrote:Correct, however, do note that this doesn't mean it's legal to also link GTK itself statically in your application too along with wxWidgets (in the case of using wxGTK), you still need to consider the licenses of any other libraries wxWidgets also depends on given the configuration you've chosen to use. This isn't typically something that requires much thought since wxWidgets has been careful to try to only depend on or include libraries compatible with the wxWindows License (i.e. expat, jpeg, libpng, libtiff, zlib, and tcl/tk regex code), but obviously GTK+ itself is a different story.
But when we statically link an app with wxwidgets on linux, we are not statically linking with GTK, on the contrary, we will be dynamically linking with GTK, right?
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Re: About licensing

Post by Auria »

Indeed linking against GTk statically is not common
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Re: About licensing

Post by leslielane »

Forgive my ignorance, but when you say "closed source, and sell it. " does this mean i can actually relabel this as mine? Or do i have to disclose the source?
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tierra
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Re: About licensing

Post by tierra »

leslielane wrote:Forgive my ignorance, but when you say "closed source, and sell it. " does this mean i can actually relabel this as mine? Or do i have to disclose the source?
They really meant in terms of an application built using wxWidgets.

In the spirit of the license, it's open to allow redistribution of wxWidgets in binary form without the burden of distributing the source code along with it, sold with your application which is linked against it.

As far as actual legal boundaries, you really should talk with a lawyer.
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Re: About licensing

Post by Auria »

leslielane wrote:Forgive my ignorance, but when you say "closed source, and sell it. " does this mean i can actually relabel this as mine? Or do i have to disclose the source?
Disclaimer : I'm not a lawyer. But I think the license forbids you from telling people that you made it all yourself. Now I don't believe the license requires you to put a huge "made with wxWidgets" label on it
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