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I work for a commercial organisation that produces closed source paid-for software. We have a legal department and we are currently getting them to help us comply with the terms of the open source licenses for the libraries we are using (MIT, BSD, Apache, PSF, CPOL, MS-PL).

They aren't software lawyers and aren't sure how we would include licenses with the software and were wondering if there were any examples of other people including licences with commercial software that they could look at.

Failing that is there any legal resource anyone is aware of that says what is required?

For example would it be OK to include a text document in the binaries folder that listed all of the distributed libraries along with the license that they used (in the case of MIT for example)?

UPDATE

I would like a reference to some external source that talks about this rather than a best guess.

UPDATE 2

I would like an authoritative answer that cites references not a best guess.

satnhak
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    Unfortunately the answer to the question cites no references and the answerer is just taking a best guess. – satnhak Jun 16 '15 at 01:29
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    off-site resource recommendations are explicitly off-topic per [help/on-topic] (it's the same here as at Stack Overflow). See http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/why-was-my-question-closed-or-down-voted/6487#6487 – gnat Jun 16 '15 at 02:08
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    What an odd rule. How are you supposed to back up a claim? – satnhak Jun 16 '15 at 13:19
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    it's probably in the way the question is written: "is there any legal resource" asks for links to off-site resources, not for an authoritatively backed up explanation – gnat Jun 16 '15 at 17:00
  • OK, you are splitting hairs; question updated. I'm asking something valuable that would be useful for professional programmers to understand. I used to be quite active on this site about 3 years ago but I had my account deleted and stopped visiting because I felt like the site lacked purpose. If all you care about are the technical reasons that a question shouldn't be answered then I feel justified in my decision and shall not post here again. Thanks. – satnhak Jun 17 '15 at 05:41
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    `We have a legal department`...`They aren't software lawyers`. Can you fire your current legal department and hire a few software lawyers to take their place? – Brandin Jun 17 '15 at 07:59
  • What a stupid comment. Do you have any concept of how the world works? Most legal work in companies is around contract law as far as I can tell, what company lawyers do is ensure that the contracts do what they should. Occasionally they get a request outside of their standard remit and then they attempt to use their general training to help. In those cases referring to what other people have done is pretty standard. This site should change its name from programmers to something more appropriate. – satnhak Jun 17 '15 at 08:37

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