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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
"Clear, correct, and deep, this is a welcome addition to discussions of law and computing for anyone -- even lawyers!" -- Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society
If you work in information technology, intellectual property is central to your job -- but dealing with the complexities of the legal system can be mind-boggling. This book is for anyone who wants to understand how the legal system deals with intellectual property rights for code and other content. You'll get a clear look at intellectual property issues from a developer's point of view, including practical advice about situations you're likely to encounter.
Written by an intellectual property attorney who is also a programmer, Intellectual Property and Open Source helps you understand patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and licenses, with special focus on the issues surrounding open source development and the GPL. This book answers questions such as:
How do open source and intellectual property work together?
What are the most important intellectual property-related issues when starting a business or open source project?
How should you handle copyright, licensing and other issues when accepting a patch from another developer?
How can you pursue your own ideas while working for someone else?
What parts of a patent should be reviewed to see if it applies to your work?
When is your idea a trade secret?
How can you reverse engineer a product without getting into trouble?
What should you think about when choosing an open source license for your project?
Most legal sources are too scattered, too arcane, and too hard to read. Intellectual Property and Open Source is a friendly, easy-to-follow overview of the law that programmers, system administrators, graphic designers, and many others will find essential.
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: 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: 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.
Product Description: To compete effectively in digital business markets, you need to understand how the law affects your digital technology business.
The contents include detailed plain English business and legal guidance on:
* Securing Intellectual Property for Digital Business * Digital Contract Fundamentals * Open Source Rules and Strategies * Development, Consulting and Outsourcing * Software as a Service * Business Software Licensing, Partnering and Distribution * Web and Internet Agreements * Privacy on the Internet * Digital Multimedia Content Clearance and Distribution * IT Standards * Web and Mobile Technology and Content Deals * Video Game Development Deals * International Distribution * User-Created Content, Mash-ups, MMOGs and Web Widgets * And Much More
Comprehensive Business and Legal Guidance including
* Securing Intellectual Property for Digital Business * Digital Contract Fundamentals * Open Source Rules and Strategies * Development, Consulting and Outsourcing * Software as a Service * Business Software Licensing, Partnering, and Distribution * Web and Internet Agreements * Privacy on the Internet * Digital Multimedia Content Clearance and Distribution * IT Standards * Video Game Development and Content Deals * International Distribution * User-Created Content, Mash-Ups, MMOGs, and Web Widgets * And Much More
Key Features:
* Up-to-the-Moment Legal Guide
* In Plain English
* Includes 38 Contract and Web Forms in the Book and Online
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