Hi, everyone.

A group I was part of in school made a patch in pure data which got noticed by a science center and they expressed interest in expanding on the concept we built and have us continue on it so to say.

So I guess my question is,
Can I (and my group) develop a patch/project for said science center and potentially make money out of it?

@whale-av Your post contains so much false information.

If you write a patch or other software, you are the author of that software and it is protected under copyright laws. If you publish that software without giving any license, be the software Open Source or not, nobody has any rights to use it in any way. Only if you as the author grant those rights by providing a license, people can get the rights to use, change or republish the work, depending on the license.

The notion that "Open Source" and "Free license" have anything to do with each other legally, is simply wrong.

That we live in this grey area in this forum, where everybody uses anybodies work even without license and nobody sues is nice, but has no legal implications. If you live in the US, you may evoke the Fair Use doctrine, but that is not the case outside the US.

@ingox So they can license their own work as long as they include the original licences of the software they use and they respect those licenses?
Unfortunately I had taken that as a given that they must include the licenses.
And if they don't include their own license then they cede no rights (of their own)?
David.

@whale-av Basically yes. Using other peoples code as part of your own software obviously complicates things and is usually only possible if this other code is under free license or you have the explicit permission of the author. But then there are different kind of free licenses and they are not necessarily compatible. But if they are, you can combine the code and republish it under your own compatible license.

In case of copy-left licenses like the GPL the case is more clear: Any derivative work must also be copy-left.

Also the whole monetary aspect is not relevant to most free licenses, so you can for example sell software that is licensed under the GPL. In which kind of business model that would make sense is another question, but there is nothing preventing you from doing this and there are examples where this makes perfectly sense

And there are some another aspects that where discussed above and may not be clear in every case:

• If you use a free software to create your own code (e.g. use Pd to create a patch), afaik your code does not have to respect the license of the creation software and you can do with your code whatever you want.
• If you use external code but not directly, by only referencing it as a library that you don't include in your software directly (e.g. writing [cyclone/counter] in your patch), afaik you also don't have to respect the license of that code in all cases. Probably with the GPL you have to respect it and your own code has to be GPLed as well. With the library being under the LGPL you can ignore it and do with your code whatever you want.

But i not completely sure about the two above cases

@ingox Actually, I think everything I have written about passing on licenses is incorrect too as their client has them from their downloads, and all that they will copyright and license is the text files (patches) that they deliver to their client.
It is just an instruction set, like writing a macro for Microsoft Word.
The format belongs to Miller, and will be covered by the Pd license, which you must have to run the program, and which varies depending on the distribution that they use.
Maybe the Pd license for the distribution that they have used to create the patches should be included though.
But as you say, you have accessed the code of objects to create the patch...... so...
Then again, the text file could be written without Pd.
Does knowledge of an object, needed to write the text correctly, obligate the writer?
If I write letter.doc here do I have to upload the Microsoft office license to this forum?
Hmm.
No. But it obligates the reader if they use it.

On the monetary subject, yes for one client, but once it's "out there" you need real resources to protect your copyright.
Continued development can earn a revenue stream though.
A neighbour designs circuitry for mobile phone parts and stays in the game without patents...... through continuous development.
David.

@ingox (IMHO + IANAL) (for two above cases) you are right!

@lacuna

How could you close the source of a running patch?

Somebody could make an external to do that.
For fun i thought about various approaches (but TBH none really perfect).
Anyway even if i could do one, i would not do it!

Also i believe Ofelia allows to compile patch code into exe

@whale-av You are mixing things up again.

I can sell the Pd software for 50 $ and it is completely legal as it is under BSD license. If i can build a sustainable business model from this or even can find only one customer who pays me 50 $ for a software that is available without charge on the web is a totally different question

@ingox Agreed, but in this case, until they have handed over their project it has value, as it is not available for free.

@whale-av Well, if they have the code, but not a license that allows what they want to do with the code, they may be interested to buy such a license, which i believe was the original question

In such a case it could also make sense to pay the author to publish the code under a free license

It is also worth noting that an author can publish the same code under different licenses. So for example, if a software is under the GPL and i want to use parts of the software in my project, but i don't want my own code under the GPL, i can contact the author and ask her, if she would also release under a different license, maybe even pay her for that

Not possible however is to revoke a license that is once given. So if my software is out there under the GPL, i cannot undo this. (Maybe there are commercial licenses that allow revocation, but i am not aware of any.)