I’m developing a CMS, inside it I use many various plugins/addons wich licenses mostly like MIT, GNU, GPL (such as jQuery, nivoSlider, DataTables and so on..). After reading those licenses I believe I can use them inside my CMS and charge users for my CMS.
In my project I have a specific folder where I store all these plugins with their license and all notices. Is this the correct way? Or should I somewhere on my site notice the all plugins Im using with the path where they can be found in my project folder?
What about if I would use my CMS as SaaS? The end users would not have the access to source files so I would not exactly be distributing it. Is it posible?
And lastly, can I protect my own source files with the license? Wouldnt it collide with the other ones? I would like to protect it as much as I can at least in a legal way as I cannot really protect it as all PHP files are easy accessible.
Thank you for any help. Also note that I have read a lot about license, but these are things I would like to confirm or to see if I misunderstood something.
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The MIT and BSD licenses allow you to use them as a library and still keep your work under any license you want. The GPL, on the other hand, doesn’t allow this. When you use a GPL library, the whole project must be GPL. There is a special version of the GPL, the LGPL (Library GPL or Lesser GPL) which specifically allows to use the library in non-GPL projects.
But the GPL only applies to distribution of software. When you provide the software as a service, you don’t distribute the software. That means you do not need to provide the sorcecode to anyone. There is a special version of the GPL, the AGPL (Affero GPL) which closes this loophole and requires you to license the software to anyone who uses it via network.
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