My company is offering a SaaS solution which is accessible via a web browser. We are using external libraries/frameworks like jQuery or the Zend framework in our solution. Do we have to make the different licenses from this libraries/frameworks accessible to our customers, for legal reasons? Do we have to mention the external libraries/frameworks on a credits page, or is it legal just to provide our service without giving credits to other libraries/frameworks?
Can we still provide our service under our proprietary license (don’t know if it makes sense)?
Or software is not downloadable, but we are shipping whole appliances or virtualmachines with our solution.
Each license will have its own requirements, but most permissive licenses (such as the MIT and Apache licenses) don’t require you to specifically mention them or their license to your application users. Instead they require that you maintain distribute the license and copyright information if you distribute the source code. In addition, the Apache license in particular requires that you provide a notice in any source file that has been modified stating such.
I have seen library licenses (see the second requirement), however, which specifically require attribution within a linking application.
I am not a lawyer, and you should consult with a lawyer if you have doubts concerning licensing.