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Ok. I have started to port an open source project from Linux to Windows. My doubt is, can i sell it for money after porting to windows? is it ethical?

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What does the open source license say? – DJClayworth Aug 15 '12 at 16:17
I can see nowhere they have mentioned about licensing. This is the only thing which is mentioned: "The best advantage of being open source is that you own your information and you are free to move where you want without being tied to a provider." Anyhow I am porting this just for my academia and to learn about the porting and the language. – SS Hegde Aug 15 '12 at 16:30

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IANAL. Most open source projects use one of the "standard" licenses:

  • BSD/MIT (liberal, do whatever you want): you can use it in a commercial, closed source product.
  • GNU/GPL ("copyleft" licenses), you probably can't -- these license state that your port ("derived work") must also be open source as well.
  • CC (Creative Commons): has some variants that permit commercial use and some variants that don't. Read the subclauses.

In many open source projects there is a COPYING/LICENSE file which includes the license. Find out what license your project has. These keywords should be enough to get you started.

In many of these cases the license may require you to attribute the original author.

If the project does not explicitly state the license type, the author (copyright holder) has not granted you any right to use it in derived work. You must seek his explicit consent before using it in a commercial project. There is a slight possibility that your open source project uses a "custom" license that is not included above, in which case you need to read it in details.

Edit:

For completeness, there are certainly more types of "open source" licenses out there, like MPL/Apache/X11 just to name a few (heck, even Microsoft has MS-PL). The important thing is to read the limitations/terms of use part (most fall into the liberal/copyleft classification paradigm). Many of these open source licenses are written in a way to be easy to understand so don't be afraid to read them. Of course since they are standard you can probably Google around and find some "layman definition" of them for non-rigorous purposes.

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Thanx. That solves my doubt. – SS Hegde Aug 15 '12 at 16:55
Technically if the author has copyright you must get his consent before using it in any project. – DJClayworth Aug 15 '12 at 17:00
@DJClayworth again IANAL but how about the case when someone explicitly states that it is in public domain, for example? By stating that the author gives anyone the right to use it for anything. By marking a prominent notice of one of those "standard" licenses (like the permissive BSD license, for example), it achieves the effect of stating the author's intent, a bit more accurately and technically. Otherwise, what's the point of having those different types of licenses? – kizzx2 Aug 15 '12 at 17:07
Unless the work is public domain, the author (or someone else) always has copyright. The license tells you what uses will be permitted, and not a breach of copyright. Disclaimer: never rely on legal advice from strangers on the internet. – Marcin Aug 15 '12 at 18:00
@Marcin Do you mean that someone who releases work under BSD can, retrospectively, exercise his copyright and say "OK, party's over Facebook. You are using this BSD framework and I decide that you must stop using it because I feel like it"? There are some projects that fork originally open source projects that have gone closed source, but the original project doesn't close down the forks. (Yeah, the author retains the copyright but that does not relate to the question ("what can I do with open source code", not "do I own that open source code because it's open") so it feels a bit strawman. – kizzx2 Aug 16 '12 at 0:01
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