For open core companies, licensing terms can become complex. For new company launch, OCV will focus on projects with permissive licenses already or the possibility to relicense. MIT is the preferred open source license for OCV.
Open source license decision tree for OCV companies
Is the open source project under a permissive license (e.g. MIT, Apache, or BSD) already?
If yes, great.
If no, is relicensing a possibility? This should be done through the influence of the author of the project or the key contributor in the community.
If yes, then we recommend to relicense to MIT and release a blog post explaining the rationale behind this change to the open source community.
If no, we may not start a company around this project.
License template
The licensing for a repository should be stated in the master directory of the repository in a document titled “LICENSE”. Where different portions of a repository have differential licensing, it is best to be explicit about that differential licensing. The license document should describe explicitly which directories fall under which license and where specifically software is proprietary.
Proprietary code should be source available and live in a repository titled /proprietary/
Below is a standard template for OCV companies with MIT license. Please copy, paste into “LICENSE” document, and update for company’s legal name. This template needs to be updated by legal if the open source project is under an Apache or other permissive license.
Copyright (c) 20xx-present [Insert Company’s Legal Name Here]
Portions of this software are licensed as follows:
* All content residing under the "doc/" directory of this repository is licensed under "Creative Commons: CC BY-SA 4.0 license".
* All content that resides under the "sa/" directory of this repository, if that directory exists, is licensed under the license defined in "sa/LICENSE".
* All client-side JavaScript (when served directly or after being compiled, arranged, augmented, or combined), is licensed under the "MIT Expat" license.
* All third party components incorporated into the [Insert Company Name Here] Software are licensed under the original license provided by the owner of the applicable component.
* Content outside of the above mentioned directories or restrictions above is available under the "MIT Expat" license as defined below.
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.
