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“I have studied Rosen’s book in detail and am impressed with its scope and content. I strongly recommend it to anybody interested in the current controversies surrounding open source licensing.” —John Terpstra, Samba.org; cofounder, Samba-Team
“Linux and open source software have forever altered the computing landscape. The important conversations no longer revolve around the technology but rather the business and legal issues. Rosen’s book is must reading for anyone using or providing open source solutions.” —Stuart Open Source Development Labs
A Complete Guide to the Law of Open Source for Developers, Managers, and Lawyers
Now that open source software is blossoming around the world, it is crucial to understand how open source licenses work—and their solid legal foundations. Open Source Initiative general counsel Lawrence Rosen presents a plain-English guide to open source law for developers, managers, users, and lawyers. Rosen clearly explains the intellectual property laws that support open source licensing, carefully reviews today’s leading licenses, and helps you make the best choices for your project or organization. Coverage includes:
Explanation of why the SCO litigation and other attacks won’t derail open source
Dispelling the myths of open source licensing
Intellectual property law for nonlawyers: ownership and licensing of copyrights, patents, and trademarks
“Academic licenses”: BSD, MIT, Apache, and beyond
The “reciprocal bargain” at the heart of the GPL
Alternative licenses: Mozilla, CPL, OSL and AFL
Benefits of open source, and the obligations and risks facing businesses that deploy open source software
Choosing the right license: considering business models, product architecture, IP ownership,
license compatibility issues, relicensing, and more
Enforcing the terms and conditions of open source licenses
Shared source, eventual source, and other alternative models to open source
Product Description: Open source software - from Linux to Firefox and MySQL database - has changed software business as we knew it. New start-ups have challenged industry heavyweights from Microsoft to Oracle with innovative copyright licensing strategies and courageous anti-patent policies. Almost every major software company has been forced to react to the commodification trend.
Drawing from detailed case studies, historical narrative and the application of economic theory, this book shows how open source licensing is used for strategic advantage. Software developers enter open source to distribute their work more efficiently and increase innovation. Software is no longer property, they say. Interestingly, everything has worked despite - rather than because of - ever-expanding intellectual property rights.
Is there a limit? In the United States, the headline cases by SCO against Linux supporters and users opened the surface of intellectual property infringement risks. In Europe, there is ongoing public debate about the impact of software patents on open source. This book goes beyond fear and doubt arguing that such legal risks are in the end just necessary but manageable uncertainties, which always come with a new business model.
Product Description: If you've held back from developing open source or free software projects because you don't understand the implications of the various licenses, you're not alone. Many developers believe in releasing their software freely, but have hesitated to do so because they're concerned about losing control over their software. Licensing issues are complicated, and both the facts and fallacies you hear word-of-mouth can add to the confusion.
Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing helps you make sense of the different options available to you. This concise guide focuses on annotated licenses, offering an in-depth explanation of how they compare and interoperate, and how license choices affect project possibilities. Written in clear language that you don't have to be a lawyer to understand, the book answers such questions as: What rights am I giving up? How will my use of OS/FS licensing affect future users or future developers? Does a particular use of this software--such as combining it with proprietary software--leave me vulnerable to lawsuits?
Following a quick look at copyright law, contracts, and the definition of "open source," the book tackles the spectrum of licensing, including: The MIT (or X), BSD, Apache and Academic Free licenses The GPL, LGPL, and Mozilla licenses The QT, Artistic, and Creative Commons licenses Classic Proprietary licenses Sun Community Source license and Microsoft Shared Source project
The book wraps up with a look at the legal effects--both positive and negative--of open source/free software licensing.
Licensing is a major part of what open source and free software are all about, but it's still one of the most complicated areas of law. Even the very simple licenses are tricky. Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing bridges the gap between the open source vision and the practical implications of its legal underpinnings. If open source and free software licenses interest you, this book will help you understand them. If you're an open source/free software developer, this book is an absolute necessity.
Product Description: Concerns have been expressed that gene patents might result in restricted access to research and health care. The exponential growth of patents claiming human DNA sequences might result in patent thickets, royalty stacking and, ultimately, a 'tragedy of the anti-commons' in genetics. The essays in this book explore models designed to render patented genetic inventions accessible for further use in research, diagnosis or treatment. The models include patent pools, clearing house mechanisms, open source structures and liability regimes. They are analysed by scholars and practitioners in genetics, law, economics and philosophy. The volume looks beyond theoretical and scholarly analysis by conducting empirical investigation of existing examples of collaborative licensing models. Those models are examined from a theoretical perspective and tested in a set of operational cases. This combined approach is unique in its kind and prompts well founded and realistic solutions to problems in the current gene patent landscape.
Product Description: The present work examines the technology trade and the cycle of poverty and addresses some of the issues that are at the heart of the technological gap between rich and poor countries. The book analyses what we understand as technology, and whether or not it is really necessary for development. The definition of technology thus developed forms the basis of the subsequent examination of the existing mechanisms of the ownership of technology, a process that will take the shape of the deconstruction of the justifications for the existence of intellectual property protection. This process will be illustrated by three cases from the developing world involving problems in the acquisition of technology. Such problems include the areas of health, biotechnology and information and communication technologies (ICTs). Towards developing solutions to this problem of acquisition, the book looks for different models that may ease the transfer of proprietary technology to developing countries. The main solution will be to look at innovative licensing schemes know as open source software.
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