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There is a product A that is developed by X-Corpoation and is provided as both Community Edition and Commercial Edition. Community Edition is licensed under GPL v1.

A Y-Corporation, my startup, wants to build a product B that is based on the community edition of the product A and wants to also be able to provide a free (community edition) of the product B, as well as the paid versions of the product, just like X-Corporation does.

Can Y-Corporation legally do this?

Additional info:

Product A's source code is taken as a code base and 70% of new features are to be added - this is what product B is panned to be. New name and logo is also a must for product B.

Product A's owner just says they are using GPL v2.

P.S. This is an essential question for my start-up, and can't just be separated and called "legal-only question". Please consider this point before deciding to vote down. Thanks.

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Do you own product A? If not, you'll have to follow whatever the rules of the license say. – jmort253 Jul 7 '12 at 19:21
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You need to provide a lot more detail about how B is "based on" the community edition of Product A. Does it include source code from Product A? Is intended to use an interface exported by Product A? In what way? Also, do you really mean GPL V1? We're up to V3 now, and V1 is very uncommon. Frankly, all things you should get legal advice on from somebody who really understands software law. If you're betting your company, you want to have a solid legal opinion, not just what some guys here say. – Chris Fulmer Jul 7 '12 at 19:33
I've updated the question with some details. The thing is - I live in Ukraine - as well as my business will be here. We have an army of lawyers, but almost none are even slightly familiar with software licensing questions. I've asked two so far. Of course I am trying to avoid having western laywers engaged in the process since it will cost a lot and won't fit into a business plan for the initial year. P.S. Now they list GPL v2 as a lisense for communitiy edition. – Maxim V. Pavlov Jul 8 '12 at 13:43

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

You can do this as long as you comply with the requirements of the GPL.

What this means is that you must make the full source code of project B available under the GPL license for both the community and paid versions. This severely limits your ability to sell a paid version of B since your customers can freely redistribute to others.

The best solution is to contact Company X and ask for a license from them that allows you to do what you want to do.

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If some funtionality is separated in libraries, can I not make these libs open source in a paid versions? They will be no more than an add-ons to a Product A, that extend it's functionality. – Maxim V. Pavlov Jul 8 '12 at 18:11

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