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Explaining Open Source Software

Posted by michael on from the score-5,-informative dept.

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.

3 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. On The Other Hand by wiredog · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "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.

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  2. Re:More ways to prevent people from doing their jo by rlowe69 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  3. Non-technical explanation? by heironymouscoward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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