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Hi I'm intrested in using the apparently now defunct app-mdi libray in a flex application for a paying customer. http://sourceforge.net/projects/appmdi/

It appears that the app-mdi project has been forked from flex-mdi and indeed the code has so much in common it would appear almost identical to the origional code.

Now in the original source flex-mdi the following licence appears in the source code

/* Copyright (c) 2007 FlexMDI Contributors. See:
http://code.google.com/p/flexmdi/wiki/ProjectContributors Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. */

However in the app-mdi library on the same file the following licence appears.

Copyright (c) 2010, TRUEAGILE All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  • Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  • Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  • Neither the name of the TRUEAGILE nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */

Now I've no problem with the licence except for the line.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

The copyright notice in its entireity makes no sense in binary material. Specifically talking about redistobutions in the binary form.

Finally the question is what exactly has to be shown on web clients who access softare that utilises this library?

Also is changing the licence in this manner actually allowed?

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  • @Chad how did you format this? looks a lot better.
    – Wes
    Jun 18, 2012 at 20:31
  • 1
    as a quote instead of code. Jun 18, 2012 at 20:36

1 Answer 1

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It says notice has to be produced in the documentation, not embedded in the binaries - though you must retain them in the source code. Nor is there anything to suggest that you must display it (though you may think displaying the disclaimer makes sense for other reasons).

As we have no idea as to what discussions took place between the copyright holder and TRUEAGILE or if TRUEAGILE bought the previous company etc, we cannot answer the question about changing the licence. But essentially the point is that if you are the copyright holder or have permission of the copyright holder you can change the licence to whatever you like.

You cannot retrospectively change the terms for previous licensees (unless the licence allowed that), but for the future you can do what you like.

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  • Agreed you've no idea about the copyright holder. But the original copyright message said Contributers. I doubt the copyright was obtained due to it being a multiple colaberation project. Purchasing seems to be out of the question too as it wasn't a company who contributed the code. But point taken. Never really noticed the MIT licence change when started working with it.
    – Wes
    Jun 19, 2012 at 23:07

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