I am not a lawyer, but I am on the GeoServer Project Steering Committee. Short version: yes. You can can sell an OpenLayers-based interactive web page built on OpenLayers+GeoServer+PostGIS. GeoServer and PostGIS remain under GPL. OpenLayers-based front-ends can be proprietary; your client pays for this part and your professional support services.
Long version: You will likely only be *using* PostGIS and GeoServer, not making any modifications, so no problems here. PostGIS and GeoServer are GPL, which means that modified versions have to be GPL; you can sell them but you cannot stop your clients from doing the same. If you must make proprietary modifications to GeoServer, you can buy a commercial license from OpenGeo. Usually your clients can just use stock GPL releases of PostGIS and GeoServer. Ship release bundles to your client. The only potential problem is your interactive front end toolkit. Any web site built on a library is derived from that library and affected by its copyright licence. The great news is that OpenLayers is BSD (2 clause [the good one]) licensed and so you can build proprietary software on it as long as you include the copyright notice that requires that your clients accept that the original authors are not to blame (please read the licence; it is much shorter than the GPL). If your employer is wants examples, please point out to them that both MacOS X and Windows use heaps of BSD licensed code, including in their kernels and networking stacks. Kind regards, Ben. On 09/03/12 17:40, vrbikdan wrote: > Hi all, > I have one question about GeoServer licence. It should be stupid question. > My employer want to know, if we can make an interactive map using GeoServer, > OL, PostGis. So yes we can, but what exactly we have to do? For exampe: We > will create interactive map using GS, OL, PG. This map will be on our server > and user will can display this map only if they pay to us. Or we will create > interactive map and this map I want to sell my customer (so I will install > GeoServer, PostGis on his server and so on). Is it possible? Is it legal > under GeoServer or PostGis licence? Where I should write, that I used > GeoServer for creating this map? My oppinion is, that we can, but GeoServer, > PostGis, OpenLayers are free, so our pay will be only for creating > interactive map, for data that we use (ours data), but not for using GS, PG, > OL. Is it right oppinnion? > > I tried to understand GeoServer licence written in here: > http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/License > http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/License but for me it is something like > to try understand singing of whales :) > > Thanks a lot and sorry for question like this > Dan > > -- > View this message in context: > http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/using-geoserver-tp4561811p4561811.html > Sent from the GeoServer - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Virtualization& Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning > Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing > also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. > http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ > _______________________________________________ > Geoserver-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-users > -- Ben Caradoc-Davies <[email protected]> Software Engineer CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering Australian Resources Research Centre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try before you buy = See our experts in action! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2 _______________________________________________ Geoserver-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-users
