What framework must I use to develop mobile native application?

Would it violate open source licenses to use open source code to develop an application with both free (feature limited) and paid (all features) versions?

• If I use open source to develop a business model for mobiles offering a free app (with limited interaction) and an app for selling (full interaction), could I violate any terms of open source laws? Any kind of advertising in this application interface could be accepted by open source terms of use without any legal implication?

• Answer:

  It depends on the license you use.  If you use a permissive license, yes you can do what you are describing with only minor considerations.  If you use a restrictive license -- then quite possibly not.  Note:  The "Open Source laws" are really just the laws that apply to copyrights and licenses.  When you use someone else's code, you have to comply to the terms under which they give you the code.  When you put code in an app-store, you have to comply with the terms of that app-store.  Put it all together and see if it matches what you want to do. Take for example, an open source project that is licensed under BSD or Apache.  You can use the code for a commercial (paid) product, but you must include the license and copyright with the product -- in your case -- you'd probably use the "about tab" in your app to display the proper attribution. e.g. the text of the BSD license (there are a few versions that are roughly equivalent) includes: Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. So -- you got to do that.  Other permissive licenses are similar, some are even more permissive -- just use the code as you please. Some restrictive licenses however will impose more terms to your use -- and these could interfere with you having an effective "paid version" strategy, since you might have to publish your source code (and thus why would anyone pay if they can compile it themselves?).  Moreover, some app-stores do not work well with some licenses (e.g. GPL indicates that you cannot further restrict the license -- yet the Apple store does add restrictions.  The result is that even if you comply to all other GPL requirements you still can't use the Apple store to distribute your GPL-ed code).  So it depends on your ability to comply with the terms. tl;dr version: The expression in your question: Would it violate open source licenses...  is too vague here since this is the very issue which makes some open source licenses different than others.  Thus it depends on which license you use. Caveat: IANAL