I'm not sure if this is the right place for this question since the software I'm developing isn't completely open source, but here goes.Long story short (and for context), I'm a member of a not-for-profit organisation. I develop and maintain several pieces of software used only inside the organisation.Most of these applications are built using Microsoft .NET and I'm not entirely sure how I license this software, or I'm even allowed to.As an example. One of these applications is a collection of Powershell scripts that makes use of SQL Server Management Objects (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo.dll)How do I license my software so that my own code is open sourced (so the organisation can make changes, derivations, etc. as they need to) without requiring the source for the Microsoft DLLs be disclosed?
How do I license an open source application that uses closed source libraries?
licensing;license recommendation
It is no big problem at all. Many open source software depends on proprietary software. Think of all the open source running on Windows.The big point here is, that you only license your software (you cannot license the other stuff).So you may leave out the .Net-framework from your distribution and the one using your software must install it independently. In that case it is clear your license only covers all that is in the distribution, so not the excluded framework. Or you include the framework, but make clear your license doesn't cover that part. Be it a mention (maybe in the file LICENSE you mention only the sources in src/ are licensed under license X, the stuff in lib/ isn't part of that).A special case here is, if you choose the GPL as your license. If you're the sole contributor to the software (or all other contributors agreed) you can link against the .net-framework without implications, but if you're not, the link might prevent you from using a proprietary framework. Other licenses are fine.Also the proprietary libraries/framework might have its licensing terms that prevent you from using it for open source. As far as I know this isn't the case for .net, especially as some open source for .net exists.