Add Vi Property: license

[Arun_Persaud]

It would be great if you could easily add a license (public domain, GPL, BSD or your own) to a vi. This would be great especially for libraries such as device drivers, etc.

I think a good place for this could be File->Vi Properties. There could be a license tab where you either can choose from common pre-defined licenses or have a text entry box where you can add your own. If someone else uses the vi, that person can than easily find out if he can use this VI in for example commercial code.

Arun

[X.]

Arun, this is a good starting point, but such a feature would only be useful if it was accompanied by a sophisticated licensing type management when releasing an application (or a library, etc) containing many types of such licenses. Developing one from the VI property could be feasible, but I'd rather have a professional programmer think about it and edict a few rules about how this needs to be added to a VI.

Check this thread for some ideas: copyright & license legal mention

This being said, I'll kudo this idea as I think this issue needs some toughts from NI.

[Arun_Persaud]

Some more ideas for a license entry in a VI: a project file could define a default license that gets added to all new VI that are created in that project. The project browser could also give you a statistic about what licenses are used (e.g. the ones you defined and the ones from drivers you use and VIs without a license definition, etc.). Something like ohloh.net shows (see here for an example https://www.ohloh.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest). This could make it very easy to find out, if you can publish your code und license XYZ or not.

From the link you posted, I also like the idea that a labview executable could have an about-dialog that shows the licenses used...

[Intaris]

This has caught my interest.  I'm not quite sure on HOW to do this, but I think it's definitely a directionw orth considering so I'll kusod it in absence of any alternative at the moment.

[ChillyWilly]

The way I can think of doing this is to have a file that can be shown when user presses a button or a custom menu item.  I think but don't quote me on this that a lic file or text can be entered in the application builder (make an .exe) plus NI has (now in 2013; not sure if it stemed from this idea or not) aThird-Party licensing addon toolkit.