Licencing question

Zgembo

Hi all,

I have been working on a project (commercial) that needs to work with KArchive library (part of the KDE). I use it for compressing and decompressing of files.
Is there any legal stuff that I should be aware of? Can I just add KArchive libs to my app? My project is in a early stage so I would really love to know if I have chosen the right path.

Tnx,
Zgembo

jsulm

@zgembo You need to check the license. I just did it and it is GPLv2.
That means: if you're going to distribute your software you will have to provide your source code to everyone asking for it.

Zgembo

@jsulm Thank you for your reply. Is it possible to buy a licence?

jsulm

@zgembo I don't know, you need to ask KDE project.

vmanso

@Zgembo Don't take this as legal advice however here is a link with some descriptions for a good portion of the open sources licenses, what they allow, what you are expected to to do and what are some limitations of these licenses.
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/

If you are going to do commercial applications that use open source libraries it's probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with the finer details of each license. I've had to learn the hard way :)
Here is the link if you want to read about each license: https://opensource.org/licenses

jsulm

@vmanso I guess your post should go to @Zgembo ?

vmanso

@jsulm oooooops. Sorry about that. I'll change it.