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I tried to find the right answer to my question but I couldn't, that's why I am here now.

Can I sell the application that I developed but contains some open source libraries? Or do I have to find people that created those libraries and ask them for permissions/pay them?

That might be a silly question but I really need to know how that works. I am currently developing mobile app that uses someone else's library (hosted on Google Code) and I don't know if I should mention that to my client?

Thanks for any help, marqss

JasonMArcher
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Marqs
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  • That really depends on the license. In general, attribution is the minimum requirement (even with a permissive license like MIT, I think it's only fair). –  Dec 10 '10 at 17:15
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about licensing or legal issues, not programming or software development. [See here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/274963/questions-about-licensing/274964#274964) and [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139804/can-licensing-questions-ever-be-on-topic) for details, and the [help] for more. – JasonMArcher Jun 24 '15 at 20:40
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about licensing or legal issues, not programming or software development. [See here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/274963/questions-about-licensing/274964#274964) and [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139804/can-licensing-questions-ever-be-on-topic) for details, and the [help center](http://stackoverflow.com/help) for more. – Uyghur Lives Matter Jul 01 '15 at 01:50

3 Answers3

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It all depends on the license.

Open source licenses are also commonly free, allowing for modification, redistribution, and commercial use without having to pay the original author. Some open source licenses only permit modification of the source code for personal use or only permit non-commercial redistribution.

See: Open-Source License, Comparison of Free Software Licenses

Donut
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It depends on the open source license of each library. You'll need to examine the licenses individually to determine what you can legally do with their libraries. For instance, the GPL puts some very severe restrictions on what you can do with an application linking to a GPL library. (It's a copyleft license, its goal is for you to also license your app's source openly; thus it's both very open and very restrictive.) The LGPL has fewer restrictions. An MIT-style license is much freer. Some projects roll their own. Others use CreativeCommons licenses. You get the idea.

T.J. Crowder
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  • Note, that even some GPL licensed software contains bit and pieces which are not GPL. You better skim through all source files for license comment headers. You may be surprised. – Denis Nikolaenko Aug 26 '11 at 11:50
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If it's GPL, you can sell your app but you have to make your app GPL too (meaning you have to share your source).

Apache and MIT are much, much less restrictive.

Be sure to read up on what the license is for the project you are wanting to include and follow what the license tells you to do.

Bryan Denny
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