Atrribution to openFrameworks

nunos · January 13, 2015, 5:39pm

I’m using openFrameworks to develop an app and I’m making the code public and want to license it under GPL.

My question is, should I include any copyright notice to openFrameworks? I was browsing through some of the github repos in the examples tag and none of them seem to do it. Maybe you just need to include a copyright notice if I was actually including part of the openFrameworks source code, which is not the case, since I am just using it?

Thanks!

zach · January 14, 2015, 12:26pm

I don’t think you need to include the license if you are not including the code itself, maybe just link to the repo and license:

github.com

openframeworks/openFrameworks/blob/master/LICENSE.md

**openFrameworks** is distributed under the [MIT License](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License). This gives everyone the freedoms to use openFrameworks in any context: commercial or non-commercial, public or private, open or closed source.

---

Copyright (c) 2004 - openFrameworks Community

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.

---

openFrameworks also ships with a mix of the following [libraries](docs/libraries.md), depending on your platform, which may have different licenses.

* [OpenGL](http://www.opengl.org/), [GLEW](http://glew.sourceforge.net/), [GLUT](http://www.opengl.org/resources/libraries/glut/), [libtess2](https://code.google.com/p/libtess2/) and [cairo](http://cairographics.org/) for graphics
* [rtAudio](http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtaudio/), [PortAudio](http://www.portaudio.com/) or [FMOD](http://www.fmod.org/)  and [Kiss FFT](http://kissfft.sourceforge.net/) for audio input, output and analysis
* [FreeType](http://freetype.sourceforge.net/index2.html) for fonts
* [FreeImage](http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/) for image saving and loading

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attribution is always good, it helps people make connections between things – thanks for asking!

nunos · January 14, 2015, 4:09pm

I see! As I thought it was or at least it seems. I’ll link it then most definitely. Thanks for your reply Zach! Cheers!

bilderbuchi · January 14, 2015, 9:14pm

Can you create a GPL-licensed work with MIT-licensed OF, though?

nunos · January 14, 2015, 10:39pm

Please someone correct me if I am wrong, the thing here is that I am in no way distributing any part of openFrameworks source code, the "Software" as it reads in the MIT License. MIT License gives me the right to use that code and tells me I should include the copyright notice in all copies or substantial portions of the Software, which I am actually not doing.

At the same time, seems to be a nice thing to mention which software library you used for your projects and link it to the respective link and license, as Zach was saying, which I’ll do for my own project as well.

genekogan · January 19, 2015, 9:10pm

you can distribute GPL-licensed work which uses MIT-licensed work, but you can’t distribute MIT-licensed work which uses GPL, unless it is also simultaneously licensed as GPL.

bilderbuchi · January 21, 2015, 8:24pm

ah, that sounds reasonable.