What to do when a company request permission to use open source code without attribution?

Question

I have an opensource project currently under MIT license. I have received a request from a company to use my code for their commercial project without having to give any attribution or credit.

To be honest, when I released the code, my sole intention was only to help a fellow programmer, and I didn't really think about if I was credited. Choosing the license was just one of the step I had to do to set up the project on codeplex.

On one hand, I feel honored and appreciate that they actually bothered to ask, on the other hand, I felt if I just allowed them to do so without any cost may just destroy the spirit of open source.

What are the typical things I or other code owners can do or request from the company to make it a fair trade? Should I even allow it?

I am thinking of asking the company to write a official letter of intent and I will sign against it just to make it more formal; and also to request a donation to project/charity of my choice or buy something on my wishlist as compensation (not very expensive). Will that be too much?

Answer 1

Many open source applications have closed source licensing options for just this scenario. How much you charge them is dependent on:

• the size of the company (how much can they afford)
• what they're going to do with it (if they're stealing it or just using it)
• what they expect you to do (support/updates/extensions? what contractual level?)
• a ton of other things.

Do you want to avoid tax implications of income? Do you hate the company? etc.

In general, I would treat it as a business deal while knowing that you've got all the leverage. The mindset of "I'd like to promote open source, so I'm charging you $5k (or whatever else high quote seems appropriate for that company for your project) - do you really not just want to give me attribution?"

Answer 2

If you're the only contributer it is up to you. You can request anything to change the license for the asking company.

If there're other contributers you have to ask also them.

Answer 3

Looks like the MIT license won't allow no attribution of the copyright holder.

Assuming you are the copyright holder, your name would have to appear in the copyright line of the license and, the license has to be included in every copy of the software.

Key points in the license related to your concerns:

"Copyright (c) year copyright holders"

"free of charge"

"subject to the following conditions"

"The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

So, either the company includes attribution if using your MIT licensed software or, you create a version of the software with another kind of license that you could sell to the company including the copyright.

Below is the MIT License (from page http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
 of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
 in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
 to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
 copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
 furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
 all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
 IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
 AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
 LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
 OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
 THE SOFTWARE.