{
  "id": 5320,
  "title": "Open Source and IP Terms",
  "url": "/competitions/flight2-milestone/discussion/5320",
  "author_name": "",
  "post_date": "2013-08-06T17:40:51.970Z",
  "votes": null,
  "comment_count": 15,
  "views": 10004,
  "content": "<p>Hi all! &nbsp;</p>\n<p>As you can no doubt see, Flight Quest 2 is the most complex competition yet run on the Kaggle platform and it comes with its own set of Rules (see the complete <a href=\"https://storage.googleapis.com/kaggle-competitions/gequest/3521/media/Flight Quest 2 Official Competition Rules.pdf\">Official Competition Rules</a>) including a license to the simulator code and some restrictions regarding Open Source Code that are a little different from other Kaggle competitions.</p>\n<p>This thread is a place for highlighting and discussing these differences. In particular, we wanted to highlight the following Rules information:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong>License to Code</strong>: All code provided to Entrants by GE or Kaggle on behalf of GE is provided to Entrants on a non-exclusive basis for the duration of the Competition and solely for Entrants to participate in the Competition, including rights to read and learn from the source code; compile and execute the source code; and alter the source code locally (including to interact with Entrant&#8217;s own code). Any use outside or not for the purposes of the Competition is prohibited.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong>Open Source Code</strong>: Your Entry will be ineligible to win a prize if it includes open source code licensed under a license other than the following approved licenses:</p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">Apache License 2.0 (&quot;Apache-2.0&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">BSD 3-Clause license (&quot;BSD-3-Clause&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">BSD 2-Clause license (&quot;BSD-2-Clause&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">MIT license (&quot;MIT&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">Python License (&quot;Python-2.0&quot;)</span></li>\n</ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">For example, your Entry must not include open source software licensed under the following licenses:</p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">GNU General Public License (&quot;GPL&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">Affero General Public License (&#8220;AGPL&#8221;)</span></li>\n</ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">In the event additional licenses are added, a revised list with the added licenses will be announced in the Competition forum on the Website.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong>Open Source Libraries and Dependencies</strong>: Your Entry will be ineligible to win a prize if it depends on open source code in a way that would grant or require GE to grant to any third party any rights to proprietary GE software, including software derived or developed from your Entry. For the avoidance of doubt, this requirement disqualifies Entries containing or relying upon open source libraries or dependencies that would affect GE's ability to redistribute derivative works as non-open source software. As set forth in Rule 17, a code scan and review may be performed on a potential winning Entry to determine whether the Entry and underlying code are consistent with these Competition Rules.</p>\n<p>Feel free to discuss in this thread and if you ping us with specific questions, we will get you a response within a reasonable timeframe.</p>",
  "messages": [
    {
      "id": "28303",
      "postDate": "08/06/2013 17:40:51",
      "content": "<p>Hi all! &nbsp;</p>\n<p>As you can no doubt see, Flight Quest 2 is the most complex competition yet run on the Kaggle platform and it comes with its own set of Rules (see the complete <a href=\"https://storage.googleapis.com/kaggle-competitions/gequest/3521/media/Flight Quest 2 Official Competition Rules.pdf\">Official Competition Rules</a>) including a license to the simulator code and some restrictions regarding Open Source Code that are a little different from other Kaggle competitions.</p>\n<p>This thread is a place for highlighting and discussing these differences. In particular, we wanted to highlight the following Rules information:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong>License to Code</strong>: All code provided to Entrants by GE or Kaggle on behalf of GE is provided to Entrants on a non-exclusive basis for the duration of the Competition and solely for Entrants to participate in the Competition, including rights to read and learn from the source code; compile and execute the source code; and alter the source code locally (including to interact with Entrant&#8217;s own code). Any use outside or not for the purposes of the Competition is prohibited.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong>Open Source Code</strong>: Your Entry will be ineligible to win a prize if it includes open source code licensed under a license other than the following approved licenses:</p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">Apache License 2.0 (&quot;Apache-2.0&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">BSD 3-Clause license (&quot;BSD-3-Clause&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">BSD 2-Clause license (&quot;BSD-2-Clause&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">MIT license (&quot;MIT&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">Python License (&quot;Python-2.0&quot;)</span></li>\n</ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">For example, your Entry must not include open source software licensed under the following licenses:</p>\n<ul style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">GNU General Public License (&quot;GPL&quot;)</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.4\">Affero General Public License (&#8220;AGPL&#8221;)</span></li>\n</ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">In the event additional licenses are added, a revised list with the added licenses will be announced in the Competition forum on the Website.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><strong>Open Source Libraries and Dependencies</strong>: Your Entry will be ineligible to win a prize if it depends on open source code in a way that would grant or require GE to grant to any third party any rights to proprietary GE software, including software derived or developed from your Entry. For the avoidance of doubt, this requirement disqualifies Entries containing or relying upon open source libraries or dependencies that would affect GE's ability to redistribute derivative works as non-open source software. As set forth in Rule 17, a code scan and review may be performed on a potential winning Entry to determine whether the Entry and underlying code are consistent with these Competition Rules.</p>\n<p>Feel free to discuss in this thread and if you ping us with specific questions, we will get you a response within a reasonable timeframe.</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "28317",
      "postDate": "08/06/2013 20:58:02",
      "content": "<p>Hi,</p>\n<p>I'm not familiar with license issues. So I'd like to confirm the above rules.</p>\n<p>If you exclude GNU GPL as well as proprietary ones from options, we can not use GNU R, Octave(MATLAB) which are one of the most used softwares here at kaggle, am I right?</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "28367",
      "postDate": "08/07/2013 13:57:35",
      "content": "<p>My guess is that they want to avoi following scenario: you are using GNU R is GPL and you might be using 3rd party GPL licensed R package. Then suppose you would win competition and after that 3rd party would contact the host of competition and request full source code of their final solution. (As it would have eaten GPL component inside and according to GPL license source code must be available). Well this is just my two cents :)</p>\n<p>Anyways I have no clue why those 5 licenses are allowed and others not. My guess is that some lawyer with knowledge of software technology licenses has thought them and decided that using only those 5 are &quot;safe&quot; for host of competition (safe = final solution cannot be &quot;force extracted&quot; by 3rd party from them after they have implemented it).</p>\n<p>Addon:<br>Hmm, I guess that python 2 license is among the 5 licenses because: <br><em>&quot;GPL-compatible doesn&#8217;t mean that we&#8217;re distributing Python under the GPL. <strong>All</strong></em><br><em><strong>Python licenses, unlike the GPL, let you distribute a modified version without</strong></em><br><em><strong>making your changes open source</strong>. The GPL-compatible licenses make it possible to</em><br><em>combine Python with other software that is released under the GPL; the others</em><br>don&#8217;t.<em>&quot;</em> source: http://docs.python.org/2/license.html</p>\n<p>This web page might be useful too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "28369",
      "postDate": "08/07/2013 14:08:56",
      "content": "<p>If I use an external libray which is licenced under Apache 2 o MIT (o whichever other licence is covered in the list we are allowed to use for OUR code), will I have any problem?</p>\n<p>Thank you.</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "28492",
      "postDate": "08/09/2013 17:32:16",
      "content": "<p>Thanks for the questions, Naokazu, sfin and zippy.</p>\n<p>First, it would probably be helpful for us to clarify that the paragraph titled '<strong>Open Source Code</strong>' only covers code you actually include in your final model that you would upload at the end of the competition (for instance, if you incorporated code from an open source random forest implementation directly in your final model).</p>\n<p>The next paragraph, '<strong>Open Source Libraries and</strong> <strong>Dependencies</strong>', covers external functions, libraries or packages that your model might call or depend on but wouldn't actually include/duplicate in your submitted code (for example R itself, or the plyr or reshape packages for R).</p>\n<p>In short, you are welcome to use R, as well as Octave (or PHP)!</p>\n<p>However, you'll need to be careful about any libraries, DLLs, functions, modules etc released under licenses other than those listed above. Without reviewing your code and seeing how it's calling/interacting with the external dependency, we have to leave it up to you to check the license and make sure that the way you are using that external dependency isn't causing your model to 'inherit' a license that would force GE to grant to any third party any rights to the final model or any derivative work.</p>\n<p>Note - these rules only affect prize eligibility for the final winning models. You're free to explore, train or prototype using any tools available to you.</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "28524",
      "postDate": "08/10/2013 16:42:01",
      "content": "<p>If I use a tool with the GPL license, but I only use the&nbsp; executable file. Is it okey?</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "28538",
      "postDate": "08/11/2013 01:04:43",
      "content": "<p>Can we use Weka?</p>\n<p>http://weka.wikispaces.com/Can+I+use+WEKA+in+commercial+applications%3F</p>\n<p>Edit: &nbsp;I should point out there are two main ways to use weka.</p>\n<p>(1) As a standalone program run form the command line. (http://weka.wikispaces.com/How+to+run+WEKA+schemes+from+commandline)</p>\n<p>(2) As a Java library. (http://weka.wikispaces.com/How+do+I+use+WEKA%27s+classes+in+my+own+code%3F)</p>\n<p>I believe (1) is permitted and (2) is not. &nbsp;But I would like to please get an official ruling on this.</p>\n<p>Thanks</p>\n<p>JJJ</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "29099",
      "postDate": "08/20/2013 21:06:34",
      "content": "<p>I was wondering if Boost is ok&nbsp; : http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt .</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "29299",
      "postDate": "08/23/2013 12:53:47",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Jiefei Li]</p>\n<p>If I use a tool with the GPL license, but I only use<br>the&nbsp; executable file. Is it okey?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>You need to provide more detail. What tool are you talking about?</p>\n<p>I can help you sort out the open source compliance, just write here more details or drop me a personal message.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>[quote=JJJ]</p>\n<p>Can we use Weka?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>The open source version is released under a strong copyleft license based on GPL. However, you can adopt Weka code if you acquire the commercial license from the University services. You might want to contact them for having an idea of costs and other conditions when licensing part of their work. It might help if you are specific and already tell them which files/libraries in particular you would like to use.</p>\n<p>I'd say it might be possible to negotiate an agreement for only paying a commercial license in case you are awarded on the competition. However, this should be agreed with them before you win the competition or the prices will go high. In case you don't win, no cost involved.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;[quote=DoomsdaySingularityMachine]</p>\n<p>I was wondering if Boost is ok&nbsp; : http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt .</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Yes, it ok. The boost license terms are friendly license for adopting in proprietary source code. Just preserve the copyright headers.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>[quote=zeppy]</p>\n<p>If I use an external libray which is licenced under Apache 2 o MIT (or whichever other licence is covered in the list we are allowed to use for OUR code), will I have any problem?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>From my experience, no problem. You will need to preserve the copyright notices on these libraries, preferably mentioning on your documentation that you using them.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>[quote=sfin]</p>\n<p>Anyways I have no clue why those 5 licenses are allowed and others not. My guess is that some lawyer with knowledge of software technology licenses has thought them and decided that using only those 5 are &quot;safe&quot; for host of competition (safe = final solution cannot be &quot;force extracted&quot; by 3rd party from them after they have implemented it).</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Yep, I'd say that the 5 listed licenses are fairly safe. My favorite list of compatible open source licenses with commercial/closed source products is found at http://www.antepedia.com/pages/community.html</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>GPL can be used with software that is distributed as closed-source. However, you will indeed need an expert to guide you through each component and investigate the context how it is used.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>For example, the Linux kernel is under GPL version 2.0 terms. Normally, any software that runs on top of Linux and is distributed as closed source would be required to be fully released as open source too. However, GPL does not apply to the whole software because Linus Torvalds added<br>a GPL exception to software running on &quot;userland&quot;. Look on the header of the Linux Kernel license: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/COPYING</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>So, there are exceptions made by the authors to the GPL copyleft effect but you need to be really careful. It is almost like walking through a minefield when your goal is keeping the software as proprietary and far from infringing the compliance of GPL and similar licenses.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "29897",
      "postDate": "09/01/2013 07:23:18",
      "content": "<p>Is the LGPL an acceptable license?</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "30348",
      "postDate": "09/06/2013 17:14:19",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Eric Martinez;29897]</p>\n<p>Is the LGPL an acceptable license?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Hi Eric - because LGPL is a weak-copyleft license, it's impossible to say without reviewing your code to see how you're using the LGPL dependency. &nbsp;You'll have to be careful to make sure that the way you're using the LGPL code isn't going to fail the requirements of the&nbsp;'<strong>Open Source Libraries and Dependencies</strong>' paragraph.</p>\n<p>[quote=Robert Ramey;29826]</p>\n<p>Please consider adding the Boost Software License to your list of approved licenses. The Boost C++ libraries are the most widely used libraries used for cutting edge development in C++. Not permitting Boost C++ libraries to be used would constitute a severe (an unnecessary) for participants in your contest which use C++.</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Robert, as mentioned by Nuno above, using Boost-licensed libraries is of course fine (so long as you're meeting the requirements of the Boost license). &nbsp;Per my earlier comment, open source libraries and dependencies are acceptable provided the way you are using that external dependency isn't causing your model to 'inherit' a license that would force GE to grant to any third party any rights to the final model or any derivative work.</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "30896",
      "postDate": "09/14/2013 06:39:18",
      "content": "<p>Can be executable files of tools <a href=\"http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/degrib/\"><strong>degrib</strong></a> and <a href=\"http://www.gzip.org/\"><strong>gzip</strong></a> used as part of solution?</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "31443",
      "postDate": "09/23/2013 22:10:53",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Haru;30896]</p>\n<p>Can be executable files of tools <a href=\"http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/degrib/\"><strong>degrib</strong></a> and <a href=\"http://www.gzip.org/\"><strong>gzip</strong></a> used as part of solution?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Thanks for asking Haru - it really depends on what you mean by 'part of the solution' and how you're using them. &nbsp;Can you explain more?</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "31454",
      "postDate": "09/24/2013 06:09:12",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Angus Christophersen;31443]</p>\n<p>[quote=Haru;30896]</p>\n<p>Can be executable files of tools <a href=\"http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/degrib/\"><strong>degrib</strong></a> and <a href=\"http://www.gzip.org/\"><strong>gzip</strong></a> used as part of solution?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Thanks for asking Haru - it really depends on what you mean by 'part of the solution' and how you're using them. &nbsp;Can you explain more?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Thanks for answer. I generate command line script file(.bat) which run them with parameters. They just need to be installed as like .net or Windows.</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "36636",
      "postDate": "12/24/2013 19:45:24",
      "content": "<p>So, from everything said above it seems that using Microsoft Visual C# <br>2010 Express (or the commercial version of the product) and writing C# <br>code which depends solely on standard .NET framework class library <br>functionality (e.g. no third party dlls) would be acceptable with <br>respect to the competition rules. Is my assumption wrong ?</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "36655",
      "postDate": "12/26/2013 09:01:40",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Zoran Kova&#269;evi&#263;;36636]</p>\n<p>So, from everything said above it seems that using Microsoft Visual C# <br>2010 Express (or the commercial version of the product) and writing C# <br>code which depends solely on standard .NET framework class library <br>functionality (e.g. no third party dlls) would be acceptable with <br>respect to the competition rules. Is my assumption wrong ?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Hi Zoran, yes, that will be fine.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    }
  ],
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": 28317,
      "author_name": "naokazumizuta",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/06/2013 20:58:02",
      "content": "<p>Hi,</p>\n<p>I'm not familiar with license issues. So I'd like to confirm the above rules.</p>\n<p>If you exclude GNU GPL as well as proprietary ones from options, we can not use GNU R, Octave(MATLAB) which are one of the most used softwares here at kaggle, am I right?</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 28367,
      "author_name": "sfin2015",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/07/2013 13:57:35",
      "content": "<p>My guess is that they want to avoi following scenario: you are using GNU R is GPL and you might be using 3rd party GPL licensed R package. Then suppose you would win competition and after that 3rd party would contact the host of competition and request full source code of their final solution. (As it would have eaten GPL component inside and according to GPL license source code must be available). Well this is just my two cents :)</p>\n<p>Anyways I have no clue why those 5 licenses are allowed and others not. My guess is that some lawyer with knowledge of software technology licenses has thought them and decided that using only those 5 are &quot;safe&quot; for host of competition (safe = final solution cannot be &quot;force extracted&quot; by 3rd party from them after they have implemented it).</p>\n<p>Addon:<br>Hmm, I guess that python 2 license is among the 5 licenses because: <br><em>&quot;GPL-compatible doesn&#8217;t mean that we&#8217;re distributing Python under the GPL. <strong>All</strong></em><br><em><strong>Python licenses, unlike the GPL, let you distribute a modified version without</strong></em><br><em><strong>making your changes open source</strong>. The GPL-compatible licenses make it possible to</em><br><em>combine Python with other software that is released under the GPL; the others</em><br>don&#8217;t.<em>&quot;</em> source: http://docs.python.org/2/license.html</p>\n<p>This web page might be useful too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 28369,
      "author_name": "gabrieleseppi",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/07/2013 14:08:56",
      "content": "<p>If I use an external libray which is licenced under Apache 2 o MIT (o whichever other licence is covered in the list we are allowed to use for OUR code), will I have any problem?</p>\n<p>Thank you.</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 28492,
      "author_name": "anguschristophersen",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/09/2013 17:32:16",
      "content": "<p>Thanks for the questions, Naokazu, sfin and zippy.</p>\n<p>First, it would probably be helpful for us to clarify that the paragraph titled '<strong>Open Source Code</strong>' only covers code you actually include in your final model that you would upload at the end of the competition (for instance, if you incorporated code from an open source random forest implementation directly in your final model).</p>\n<p>The next paragraph, '<strong>Open Source Libraries and</strong> <strong>Dependencies</strong>', covers external functions, libraries or packages that your model might call or depend on but wouldn't actually include/duplicate in your submitted code (for example R itself, or the plyr or reshape packages for R).</p>\n<p>In short, you are welcome to use R, as well as Octave (or PHP)!</p>\n<p>However, you'll need to be careful about any libraries, DLLs, functions, modules etc released under licenses other than those listed above. Without reviewing your code and seeing how it's calling/interacting with the external dependency, we have to leave it up to you to check the license and make sure that the way you are using that external dependency isn't causing your model to 'inherit' a license that would force GE to grant to any third party any rights to the final model or any derivative work.</p>\n<p>Note - these rules only affect prize eligibility for the final winning models. You're free to explore, train or prototype using any tools available to you.</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 28524,
      "author_name": "lijiefei",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/10/2013 16:42:01",
      "content": "<p>If I use a tool with the GPL license, but I only use the&nbsp; executable file. Is it okey?</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 28538,
      "author_name": "jjjjjj",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/11/2013 01:04:43",
      "content": "<p>Can we use Weka?</p>\n<p>http://weka.wikispaces.com/Can+I+use+WEKA+in+commercial+applications%3F</p>\n<p>Edit: &nbsp;I should point out there are two main ways to use weka.</p>\n<p>(1) As a standalone program run form the command line. (http://weka.wikispaces.com/How+to+run+WEKA+schemes+from+commandline)</p>\n<p>(2) As a Java library. (http://weka.wikispaces.com/How+do+I+use+WEKA%27s+classes+in+my+own+code%3F)</p>\n<p>I believe (1) is permitted and (2) is not. &nbsp;But I would like to please get an official ruling on this.</p>\n<p>Thanks</p>\n<p>JJJ</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 29099,
      "author_name": "doomsdaysingularitymachine",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/20/2013 21:06:34",
      "content": "<p>I was wondering if Boost is ok&nbsp; : http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt .</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 29299,
      "author_name": "nunobrito",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/23/2013 12:53:47",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Jiefei Li]</p>\n<p>If I use a tool with the GPL license, but I only use<br>the&nbsp; executable file. Is it okey?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>You need to provide more detail. What tool are you talking about?</p>\n<p>I can help you sort out the open source compliance, just write here more details or drop me a personal message.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>[quote=JJJ]</p>\n<p>Can we use Weka?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>The open source version is released under a strong copyleft license based on GPL. However, you can adopt Weka code if you acquire the commercial license from the University services. You might want to contact them for having an idea of costs and other conditions when licensing part of their work. It might help if you are specific and already tell them which files/libraries in particular you would like to use.</p>\n<p>I'd say it might be possible to negotiate an agreement for only paying a commercial license in case you are awarded on the competition. However, this should be agreed with them before you win the competition or the prices will go high. In case you don't win, no cost involved.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;[quote=DoomsdaySingularityMachine]</p>\n<p>I was wondering if Boost is ok&nbsp; : http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt .</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Yes, it ok. The boost license terms are friendly license for adopting in proprietary source code. Just preserve the copyright headers.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>[quote=zeppy]</p>\n<p>If I use an external libray which is licenced under Apache 2 o MIT (or whichever other licence is covered in the list we are allowed to use for OUR code), will I have any problem?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>From my experience, no problem. You will need to preserve the copyright notices on these libraries, preferably mentioning on your documentation that you using them.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>[quote=sfin]</p>\n<p>Anyways I have no clue why those 5 licenses are allowed and others not. My guess is that some lawyer with knowledge of software technology licenses has thought them and decided that using only those 5 are &quot;safe&quot; for host of competition (safe = final solution cannot be &quot;force extracted&quot; by 3rd party from them after they have implemented it).</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Yep, I'd say that the 5 listed licenses are fairly safe. My favorite list of compatible open source licenses with commercial/closed source products is found at http://www.antepedia.com/pages/community.html</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>GPL can be used with software that is distributed as closed-source. However, you will indeed need an expert to guide you through each component and investigate the context how it is used.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>For example, the Linux kernel is under GPL version 2.0 terms. Normally, any software that runs on top of Linux and is distributed as closed source would be required to be fully released as open source too. However, GPL does not apply to the whole software because Linus Torvalds added<br>a GPL exception to software running on &quot;userland&quot;. Look on the header of the Linux Kernel license: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/COPYING</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>So, there are exceptions made by the authors to the GPL copyleft effect but you need to be really careful. It is almost like walking through a minefield when your goal is keeping the software as proprietary and far from infringing the compliance of GPL and similar licenses.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 29897,
      "author_name": "ericmartinez",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "09/01/2013 07:23:18",
      "content": "<p>Is the LGPL an acceptable license?</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 30348,
      "author_name": "anguschristophersen",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "09/06/2013 17:14:19",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Eric Martinez;29897]</p>\n<p>Is the LGPL an acceptable license?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Hi Eric - because LGPL is a weak-copyleft license, it's impossible to say without reviewing your code to see how you're using the LGPL dependency. &nbsp;You'll have to be careful to make sure that the way you're using the LGPL code isn't going to fail the requirements of the&nbsp;'<strong>Open Source Libraries and Dependencies</strong>' paragraph.</p>\n<p>[quote=Robert Ramey;29826]</p>\n<p>Please consider adding the Boost Software License to your list of approved licenses. The Boost C++ libraries are the most widely used libraries used for cutting edge development in C++. Not permitting Boost C++ libraries to be used would constitute a severe (an unnecessary) for participants in your contest which use C++.</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Robert, as mentioned by Nuno above, using Boost-licensed libraries is of course fine (so long as you're meeting the requirements of the Boost license). &nbsp;Per my earlier comment, open source libraries and dependencies are acceptable provided the way you are using that external dependency isn't causing your model to 'inherit' a license that would force GE to grant to any third party any rights to the final model or any derivative work.</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 30896,
      "author_name": "dmytrolystopad",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "09/14/2013 06:39:18",
      "content": "<p>Can be executable files of tools <a href=\"http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/degrib/\"><strong>degrib</strong></a> and <a href=\"http://www.gzip.org/\"><strong>gzip</strong></a> used as part of solution?</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 31443,
      "author_name": "anguschristophersen",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "09/23/2013 22:10:53",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Haru;30896]</p>\n<p>Can be executable files of tools <a href=\"http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/degrib/\"><strong>degrib</strong></a> and <a href=\"http://www.gzip.org/\"><strong>gzip</strong></a> used as part of solution?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Thanks for asking Haru - it really depends on what you mean by 'part of the solution' and how you're using them. &nbsp;Can you explain more?</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 31454,
      "author_name": "dmytrolystopad",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "09/24/2013 06:09:12",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Angus Christophersen;31443]</p>\n<p>[quote=Haru;30896]</p>\n<p>Can be executable files of tools <a href=\"http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/degrib/\"><strong>degrib</strong></a> and <a href=\"http://www.gzip.org/\"><strong>gzip</strong></a> used as part of solution?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Thanks for asking Haru - it really depends on what you mean by 'part of the solution' and how you're using them. &nbsp;Can you explain more?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Thanks for answer. I generate command line script file(.bat) which run them with parameters. They just need to be installed as like .net or Windows.</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 36636,
      "author_name": "zkovacevic",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "12/24/2013 19:45:24",
      "content": "<p>So, from everything said above it seems that using Microsoft Visual C# <br>2010 Express (or the commercial version of the product) and writing C# <br>code which depends solely on standard .NET framework class library <br>functionality (e.g. no third party dlls) would be acceptable with <br>respect to the competition rules. Is my assumption wrong ?</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "id": 36655,
      "author_name": "anguschristophersen",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "12/26/2013 09:01:40",
      "content": "<p>[quote=Zoran Kova&#269;evi&#263;;36636]</p>\n<p>So, from everything said above it seems that using Microsoft Visual C# <br>2010 Express (or the commercial version of the product) and writing C# <br>code which depends solely on standard .NET framework class library <br>functionality (e.g. no third party dlls) would be acceptable with <br>respect to the competition rules. Is my assumption wrong ?</p>\n<p>[/quote]</p>\n<p>Hi Zoran, yes, that will be fine.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
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