Lets say there is a resource published under the CC BY-NC license that is not itself in any way related to software, but rather a database of sorts for example. As I understand, this places restrictions on any publications or derivatives of this resource, but it’s quite unclear to me how this can apply to software.
Simply put, if I were to use this resource in a software product (as in, make it crucial to the inner workings of it)
- Would I be allowed to publish this software product as open source on GitHub (since this would, in theory, be a redistribution)? If so, would my choices in standard open source licenses be limited due to the CC BY-NC license applied to the data?
- If the software itself was available for free, but contained paid ads, would this count as commercial use and thus be prohibited due to BY-NC?
Are there other issues that could arise?
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CC BY-NC prohibits commercial use of the library. This conflicts with the definition of open source and so, no, the aggregate software would not be open source.
Additionally, the definition of ‘non commercial’ is not well defined. This is the realm of lawyers. Is a non-profit with advertisements (or a donation button) on the page backed by something with an NC license in violation of that license? That’s a good question – for a lawyer.
When one starts asking about the legal restrictions for something, that is again the realm of the lawyers.
All a person reasonably familiar with open source licenses can say about CC BY-NC is that it isn’t open source or compatible with open source licenses.
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