Explaining Open Source Software

scubacuda writes "Mark Webbink, Red Hat's general counsel, has written an informative article explaining free and open source software. Geared towards attorneys, he explains the various licenses and addresses several myths about OSS." One to bookmark.

Comments

On The Other Hand

[wiredog]

"Know what you are putting on your machines" is great advice for a sysadmin. In fact, Do not permit employees to download ... without first clearing the license terms with ... legal. ... bar the use of proprietary software except to the extent that the company can account for the permitted licenses comes under the heading of "best practices" for a sysadmin.

And remember, once the GPL, MPL, Artistic License, etc, have been cleared through legal, anything under those licenses is no longer barred from downloading.

Re:More ways to prevent people from doing their jo

[rlowe69]

Actually the quote says "...without first clearing the license terms with the legal department."

So for example, don't let your employees use GPL software until you understand what the GPL is. Fair enough. After you approve the GPL license terms, people are free to use GPL software.

Did you interpret this to mean that you would need approval for each piece of open source software? Because yes, that would be a huge pain! I don't think that is what the guideline meant. Getting an open source license approved once isn't a big deal.

Re:More ways to prevent people from doing their jo

[Fnkmaster]

Yes, that is definitely idiotic big-company-think. I think a manager should be responsible for informally overseeing or okaying use of random new tools. Using a tool is very different from incorporating source code, copy-and-pasting material, and doing something that creates a potential legal issue. As a manager, if somebody says they need Winzip, emacs, bash or whatever to feel comfortable and get work done, then more power to them. It should be made completely clear to them that they can't download source code or software from any source on the internet for use as a part of a product, runtime component or anything like that without approval from a manager and legal. Beyond that, there's nothing you can do but trust your employees, make the potential consequences really clear, and conduct regular code reviews to spot anything potentially suspect (primarily just to spot shitty, lazy code, but if somebody really cut and pasted a bunch of code, it would probably be obvious if you knew their coding style, your company's coding standards, and so on).

Non-technical explanation?

[heironymouscoward]

How about an explanation that works for suits?

Something like this:

- Open source and free software is like disk space. You used to pay $1000 for 1GB, today you get 1Gb for $1.

- This is possible because the Internet has made communications so cheap that the traditional huge costs of making software - design, management and infrastructure - have been largely eliminated.

- "Closed software" businesses like Microsoft would very much like you to continue paying 1970's prices for software.

- But the fact is that your competitors are benefiting from high-quality free packages like OpenOffice, Apache, PHP, Linux, and MySQL.

- You should really be switching your IT budgets from paying for software licenses to paying for support and custom development: this is the best way to keep an edge in the market.

Every dollar spent on buying overblown commercial software that has a free equivalent is a dollar wasted. Are you sure you want to waste your money?

Typical lawyer misdirection ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

"Remember, amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic."

Mild humor value aside ...

How many icebergs did the Ark bounce off of? And if we are accepting the Ark and Flood we have to also accept that God was piloting the Ark, have to take the entire story or none at all , and piloting was the problem with Titanic not construction. That is we are being fair and objective.

Personally if the pro Open Source lawyer is making statements like the above the document's credibility comes into question. Where there is one piece of spin and misdirection there may be more. I would prefer a objective unbiased legal analysis. The author should hold the jokes for the conference presentations.

Re:Please: NO!!!

[JonMartin]

This may lead to proper understanding of GPL, BSD and other licenses... Slashdot replies may never be the same again ;)

I wish. Unfortunately the lawyer resorts to the same GPL FUD I see all the time:

Open source licenses may be broadly categorized into the following types: (1) those that apply no restrictions on the distribution of derivative works (we will call these Non-Protective Licenses because they do not protect the code from being used in non-Open Source applications); and (2) those that do apply such restrictions (we will call these Protective Licenses because they ensure that the code will always remain open/free).

BZZZT, wrong Lawyer-man. Pointing out that "Protective Licenses ... ensure that the code will always remain open/free" gives the misleading impression that "Non-Protective Licenses" do not. Keeping the code open is not an ongoing function of the license but the community. If I release some code under the BSD license it will always be open as long as someone is willing and able to redistribute it. No one (not even me) can "close" it as long as there is a copy of it available out there. The birth of OpenSSH is a perfect example of this.

So if "Protective" licenses offer no additional protection for my code than "Non-Protective" licenses, the question is what is the difference and why is Lawyer-man lying about it?

I know the answer, do you?