Open source licensing

The licence is what determines whether software is open source

The licence must be approved by the Open Source Initiative (www.opensource.org)

All approved licences meet their Open Source Definition (www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php)

Approved licences >50 and include the GPL, LGPL, MPL and BSD.

Intellectual Property Rights

Writing software = creating property

Property is always owned by somebody

Agreements and contracts should specify who owns property that is created

This may require a technical legal examination of any agreement and contracts

All projects which produce software need to keep complete, detailed records of the licensing and ownership of contributions to that software - an IPR registry

Copyright

Software is protected by copyright law

By default only the owner of software may copy, adapt or distribute it.

The owner of software can agree to let another person copy, adapt or distribute the code - this agreement is called a licence.

Licence effects

Open source licences grant the rights to copy, adapt or distribute the code to people other than the owner

Open source licences aim to create a community of contributors who will fix and develop the software.

Combining two pieces of software code under different licences can be complex.

A common myth

There is no compulsion to release changes that you make, either under the GPL or any other open source licence

You may keep internal versions of GPL software that you have modified without necessarily licensing them to anyone else

This applies equally to individuals and legal entities like companies and institutions

What is open source?

Elena Blanco

2006-05-16T14:14:39