"[SOLVED] Applying AGPL license to Extension"

balintk

Hello,

I'm developing a new RapidMiner Extension for a University project, and I would like to upload it to GitHub and to the Marketplace. However, I would like to ask some questions about applying the AGPL license before running into any legal issues.

1. I used the RapidMiner Extension Template from the GitHub repository, which came with predefined "LICENSE" and "short_license.txt" files. I only modified the year to "2001-2014" in the "short_license.txt" file and kept the "Rapid-I and the contributors" part. Is this enough? I checked the license files of another Extension developed by a third party and the license text was the same as the Template's license text. Here's it's source: https://github.com/matmih/Recommender-extension

2. Should the entire content of the "short_license.txt" be included into every source of Java class I authored?

3. I've read that the AGPL license says, that the source of an AGPL licensed software should be hosted and there should be a link provided. If I only make a GitHub repository for my Extension, host the source there and insert a link of the GitHub repository into the readme file and the Marketplace description, that would be enough?

I would like to note that I haven't yet uploaded my finished Extension to GitHub nor to the Marketplace.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,
Bálint

land

Hi Balint,

in principal you can apply any license onto your sources you want. However, you need to satisfy the requirements of the program you are linking against and the libraries you are using. If you want to publish an extension for the Community Edition of RapidMiner, then your extension needs to be AGPL3 as well. If you are going to publish that only for RapidMiner v6, then you can use any license you want. Of course you are invited to still publish that under an open-source license as the AGPL3. If you want to go this road, the following will apply:

1. I used the RapidMiner Extension Template from the GitHub repository, which came with predefined "LICENSE" and "short_license.txt" files. I only modified the year to "2001-2014" in the "short_license.txt" file and kept the "Rapid-I and the contributors" part. Is this enough? I checked the license files of another Extension developed by a third party and the license text was the same as the Template's license text. Here's it's source: https://github.com/matmih/Recommender-extension

Well, all fine. You simply should also rename Rapid-I to RapidMiner GmbH, as the company was renamed half a year ago.

2. Should the entire content of the "short_license.txt" be included into every source of Java class I authored?

Yes, I think that's a good idea. This avoids confusion, if someone stumbles over a single class file without taking a look at the entire program.

3. I've read that the AGPL license says, that the source of an AGPL licensed software should be hosted and there should be a link provided. If I only make a GitHub repository for my Extension, host the source there and insert a link of the GitHub repository into the readme file and the Marketplace description, that would be enough?

It's true that you must make your source code available to users of the program. However, you can either package the source code into the extension itself or also publish that on GitHub or SourceForge. That would be enough as well.

If you have further questions about publishing extensions on the marketplace, please don't hesitate to contact us by mail. We can then discuss these matters more directly.

With kind regards,
  Sebastian