Hello,
Ruby on Rails is licensed under the MIT.
Is there a restriction over the license of the web site developped with
this framework?
For example, if I build a web site with RoR framework, can I put my
application under an other license such as BSD?
Thank you.
Z4ng’
Zangief I. wrote:
For example, if I build a web site with RoR
framework, can I put my application under
an other license such as BSD?
Yes. The RoR license imposes no restrictions on works created with RoR.
And very few on RoR itself.
On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 3:57 AM, Zangief I.
[email protected] wrote:
Is there a restriction over the license of the web site developped with
this framework?
For example, if I build a web site with RoR framework, can I put my
application under an other license such as BSD?
If you plan to redistribute somebody else’s software, it’s probably
worth actually reading the license. MIT license is particularly short
and easy to understand. There is just one restriction in it (the
second paragraph).
The MIT License
Copyright (c)
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.
–
Alexey V.
CruiseControl.rb [http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com]
RubyWorks [http://rubyworks.thoughtworks.com]
Thanks for your precision.
So if I build my own RoR application based on RoR, I need to respect the
MIT license.
But if I build my own web application thanks to RoR, there is not any
restriction.
Greetings 2008.
On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 9:12 AM, Zangief I.
[email protected] wrote:
So if I build my own RoR application based on RoR, I need to respect the
MIT license. But if I build my own web application thanks to RoR, there is not any
restriction.
Have you read the damn license? 
It doesn’t demand respect. Only that you include the text of the
license with “any substantial portions of Rails”, and don’t sue
authors / copyright holders under any circumstances. In practice, if
you vendor Rails in your app (as you always should), vendor/rails
directory will contain MIT-LICENSE files, as required.
How you license your own app is not restricted by MIT license at all.
It’s not GPL.
–
Alexey V.
CruiseControl.rb [http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com]
RubyWorks [http://rubyworks.thoughtworks.com]
If you write a Rails app and release it under BSD, your application
code is under BSD, not Rails. Rails is still MIT.
–Jeremy
On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Zangief I.
[email protected] wrote:
–
http://jeremymcanally.com/
http://entp.com
Read my books:
Ruby in Practice (Ruby in Practice)
My free Ruby e-book (http://humblelittlerubybook.com/)
Or, my blogs:
Alexey V. wrote:
It doesn’t demand respect. Only that you include the text of the
license with “any substantial portions of Rails”, and don’t sue
authors / copyright holders under any circumstances. In practice, if
you vendor Rails in your app (as you always should), vendor/rails
directory will contain MIT-LICENSE files, as required.How you license your own app is not restricted by MIT license at all.
It’s not GPL.
Thanks for your comment. I agree with you. But I don’t know how it could
be possible to give to my projet a license such as the BSD one with RoR
which is in MIT. Because if I puts the BSD license on an application
building thanks to RoR framework, everyone can use my application and
modify it without any restriction, and so everybody is able to delete
the MIT-LICENSE file… just because the BSD license have not any
restriction about the contain of MIT-LICENSE files.
Jeremy McAnally wrote:
If you write a Rails app and release it under BSD, your application
code is under BSD, not Rails. Rails is still MIT.–Jeremy
Thanks 
On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Zangief I.
[email protected] wrote:
But I don’t know how it could be possible to give to my projet a license such as the BSD one with RoR
which is in MIT.
Like Jeremy said, different portions of your package can have
different licenses, with one caveat: as long as nothing inside is
licensed under GPL.
By the way, MIT and BSD licenses are, practically speaking, the same
contract (do whatever you please, include this license, don’t sue us).
–
Alexey V.
CruiseControl.rb [http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com]
RubyWorks [http://rubyworks.thoughtworks.com]
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 3:59 PM, Lionel B.
[email protected] wrote:
To make things clear : I’m pretty sure you can release a Rails
application under the GPL. What is forbidden is the other way
Of course.
check any library outside Rails/Ruby core/stdlib for caveats.
Well, here is the catch: parts of Ruby core are GPL.
Don’t include Ruby core/stdlib in your own package, or, if you
absolutely must, include JRuby instead - JRuby is 100% non-viral.
–
Alexey V.
CruiseControl.rb [http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com]
RubyWorks [http://rubyworks.thoughtworks.com]
Alexey V. wrote:
check any library outside Rails/Ruby core/stdlib for caveats.
Well, here is the catch: parts of Ruby core are GPL.
I wasn’t aware of that. A grep on /usr/lib/ruby only returned LGPL
matches on my system which isn’t a problem, do you have any pointers to
the specific code under GPL?
Lionel
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Lionel B.
[email protected] wrote:
Well, here is the catch: parts of Ruby core are GPL.
I wasn’t aware of that. A grep on /usr/lib/ruby only returned LGPL
Oops, my bad, was writing from [faulty] memory. LGPL it is, indeed.
–
Alexey V.
CruiseControl.rb [http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com]
RubyWorks [http://rubyworks.thoughtworks.com]
Alexey V. wrote:
To make things clear : I’m pretty sure you can release a Rails
application under the GPL. What is forbidden is the other way : use a
GPL library in your Rails application and release it as BSD, MIT or
proprietary (anything but GPL compatible licenses). Anyway… GPL
libraries are pretty rare (they are LGPL usually).
So basically with Rails, you can release your code anyway you want as
long as you include the BSD/MIT licenses for the relevant packages and
check any library outside Rails/Ruby core/stdlib for caveats.
Lionel
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