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A Compact Guide To F/OSS Licensing
Those familiar with the O'Reilly product offerings have no doubt seen or purchased one or more their Pocket Reference series. These are not comprehensive references, but rather convenient guides for a specific topic to provide the sort of information one is not likely to have committed to memory, particularly as the trend of having cross-disciplined technologists continues. This book could be considered the analog of such pocket guides for open source and free software licensing. Open source licenses and their legal interpretation, though, easily warrant a "pocket reference" that is a full-sized book of nearly 200 pages.
Frankly, reading through a software license and maintaining a reasonable level of comprehension is a rather tough job. The author manages to make the task far more bearable and fruitful at the same time; a difficult balance to strike. The pace of the annotation works well to break up the various licenses (twelve in total) into bite-sized chunks. Chapters 2 and 3, which address the Apache/BSD/MIT family of licenses and the GPL/LGPL/MPL family of licenses respectively, each end with a section titled "Application and Philosophy" that serves as a sort of reward for making it through the license and establishes a touchstone to summarize and provide meaningful context for what has been covered.
The annotations of the different licenses are a great introduction, but the book should not be considered a complete reference for open source licensing issues. The book seems to affirm this at points where the author indicates that particular topics fall outside the book's scope, even to the point of recommending experienced legal counsel for certain issues. It also has a wonderful collection of footnotes and reference to other resources to allow the reader to flesh out topics of interest beyond the focus of this work.
One subtlety of the book that should not be missed is how the history of the open source movement is woven throughout the book to provide the context in which these licenses came into being and were modified to accommodate the vibrant, emerging world of open development models. The book's last two chapters bring that context to the foreground, fully developing the consequence of the licenses in daily development activity. It is far too easy to view these licenses and as mere legal documents that exist in and of themselves; the author reminds us that these licenses are the manifestations of a spirit of selfless contribution and work toward social good made possible by the considerable sacrifice of quite gifted individuals. For those passionate about the open source and free software movements, the section of chapter 7 titled "Models of Open Source and Free Software Development" is a poignant and stirring encapsulation of the first years of the GNU and Linux projects and the work that brought them into being. The cliché rings true; we do indeed "stand on the shoulders of giants."
The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words seemed relatively high; this is a trend that seems to have developed in technical books in recent years, to a point that the technical community has come to accept it as some sort of side effect of the rapid pace with which books must be produced in order to keep pace with the rate of change. Given that this is an issue present in other works as well as this one, it should not particularly count as a mark against the work, but rather serve to underscore an issue publishers should consider improving.
Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing strikes a balance between completeness of subject matter coverage and manageability of size. Given the amount of attention the average open source user or developer has given to licensing, reading this book would be a considerable improvement. This book is recommended for a couple of audiences. First, it serves as a great foundation for developers either active in or contemplating participation in open source development. Searching most any open source mailing list for the term "license" can usually turn up some of its hottest flame wars. If most developers had this introductory level of understanding about the main open source licenses, hundreds of message threads arguing about licensing could be avoided.
A second audience for this book is the project manager and/or CTO in most corporate IT shops. Most corporate projects are making use of numerous open source libraries and frameworks. This is particularly true with J2EE, but also with .Net as a number of .Net counterparts to popular J2EE resources arise, e.g. NAnt, NUnit, etc. This book can dispel unnecessary apprehension regarding the use of these libraries that often arises from fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) propagated in much of the mainstream technology media. It can also equip managers to make informed decisions about team members' potential contributions to open source projects and the potential legal implications.
You can purchase Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing from bn.com. (You might also be interested in Peter Wayner's review of Lawrence Rosen's book on the same topic, Open Source Licensing .) Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Most software programmers don't really care to delve too far into the intricacies of various software licenses. Basically, for most people, if they want the software to be free, they use the GPL, and if they want it to be closed, they either sell it to a company or hire a lawyer.
As for the intellectual property lawyer, well, while he might find his line of work interesting, he is acutely aware that most people find intellectual property law the best cure for insomnia out there. Most intellectual property lawyers (and contract and tax lawyers, for that matter) I know tend to joke about how boring their line of work is.
Thanks in advance.
The book is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs and is available as PDF.
My dentist gave me a fairly informative guide on F/OSS as well. It seems that it can reduce the occurance of gingavitis by up to 60%! Can you believe it? I couldn't.
The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words seemed relatively high; this is a trend that seems to have developed in technical books in recent years, to a point that the technical community has come to accept it as some sort of side effect of the rapid pace with which books must be produced in order to keep pace with the rate of change. Given that this is an issue present in other works as well as this one, it should not particularly count as a mark against the work, but rather serve to underscore an issue publishers should consider improving.
Actually, I think this has gone just about far enough. It is not simply a situation where the publishers need to do more Q&A, it is really becoming DIFFICULT to actually read; the error rate is alarming. But maybe I'm the only one.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Although the title, and therefore rightfully the main topic of the book, is A Compact Guide To F/OSS Licensing, other topics should be discussed openly, such as their less related to the liscenses produced by Microsoft, Adobe, and other large companies. There are many valid points that could be made when comparing the two liscenses and this could even help less advanced users better understand the topic.
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
http://www.croftsoft.com/library/tutorials/opensou rce/
It gave a nice, concise grid of options with some further explanation. Too bad I didn't know of this book, though. It sounds like just what I needed! -- PaulOpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words seemed relatively high;
While this is a printed book, and I understand the need for well-formed english, I am glad that the reviewer didn't subtract from the books overall score just because of this. Too many people these days spend too much time looking at the presentation of the subject matter instead of looking at the subject matter being presented.
A second audience for this book is the project manager and/or CTO in most corporate IT shops
Having read this book, I would have to disagree with this. Project Managers and CTOs would probably not get more than three pages before the book was discarded to the pile of "might have an underling review this."
The best place (imnsho) for this book is in the hands of a well-versed and well-spoken advocate with friendly access to those CTOs and Project Managers. Other than that, I would agree with the review completely. An outstanding book. Great content, very informative. Two Thumbs up.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
gigabitis? :P
Seriously though, stop trolling. Go outside, it's nice out, throw a frisbee or something.
~/.sig: No such file or directory
http://www.croftsoft.com/library/tutorials/openso
AFL - Academic Free License (replaces Apache, BSD, and MIT)
Mutual Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims that are essential to use that software.
It's also covered in the "Open Software License
v. 1.1" (akin to GPL).
The "Common Public License Version 1.0" deals a lot with patents, but I couldn't understand a thing
Use the GNU GPL.
When sharing with others that I was reviewing an O'Reilly book....the first question was always the same: 'What book are you reviewing?'
Noooo...REALLY!!?? You thought perhaps they'd ask for your shoe size or perhaps the time of the last bus back home?
AT&ROFLMAO
Black Duck
Black Duck will have read this book and if you mayebe sorta think you might want to read the book, you'd do well to hit their website and see what they do. IF you write commercial or licensed software and you hope to get some real milage out of open source and not be SCO fodder, then a little time invested by somebody in your organization to know the ins and outs of mixing sources that come under various licenses is a prudent investment.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
It's quite depressing that this is what people think of as ``security'': patch maniacally; install a scanner that checks for yesterday's attacks; don't view the pictures, don't drink the water, don't breathe the air.
That's awesome! I'll just install gaim on a windows machine, then microsoft will be doing soon. Ants have a very easy job. The kind robots will be open source. Because it is a comedy for those who think and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be open source.
Stop your dull little tricks, please! A torpedo is a sword with a keyboard and bellows.
That's awesome! I'll just install gaim on a central stick. The anus is the outer layer of an ass and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon. Because i decided to have a very easy job. G'day mate, it is humanity hanging on a windows machine, then microsoft will be open source. Because it is a comedy for those who cannot think. The neck is the happiness of those who think and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be open source.
Stop your dull little tricks, please! A torpedo is a small portable musical instrument with a keyboard and bellows.
One of the issues I have been trying to understand about the GPL is exactly when you are or are not allowed to link to non-GPL-compliant libraries. IANAL, if you want a legal advice buy it from a licensed attourney, etc.
If you read the general overviews, it would seem that such linking is always explicitly prohibited. But the license doesn't mention anything of the sort. I have not been able to find the word "link" used in this context at all in the license. Here are a few common options I have thought of that might contradict the "in a nutshell" overviews of the license:
1) I download GPL'd code and compile it for my own use (no redistribution) and I use a proprietary ANSI C library. This is probably a common issue on Windows where you may be linking to the Windows ANSI C libraries for a native executable.
2) I download GPL'd code and it has a wrapper which interfaces via linking with a number of proprietary packages (think NDIS-wrapper), or perhaps it allows another GPL'd project to link to this using standard interfaces.
Now, if you think about it, the GPL'd code in question is an independent work by any interpretation I can find, and there is no dependency either way regarding the program. I.e. despite the fact that they are linking, they are doing so by standards which are independent of the specific project linked to. In the first case, the standards are the ANSI C standards, and in the second, they are de facto standards created by Microsoft but implimented by a number of vendors. In other words neither work derives from the other.
The GPL gives specific permission to communicate with non-compliant programs through pipes and sockets, and I suspect that this is to make a distinction between this practice and linking. This is, in my layman's opinion, because if the test is whether you have vendor-neutral standard and no knowledge of the other specific program, one might argue that talking to a program using its specific protocol would constitute the same level of derivation as, say, linking to a proprietary library.
The difference, though, is a matter of distribution because the library MUST be distributed with the software while communication via a socket is more general (and, for example, could allow one to write a GPL'd client app for a proprietary server). Copyright restrictions could then be used to kill distribution of the GPL'd client if it depended on linking to a proprietary library, while such an approach would not work for programs merely communicating via sockets (i.e. these could be bought separately).
Interestingly, I am not sure that last bit is actually true absent market controls (read in other countries). If, for example, Microsoft were to distribute Windows under a license which said "You are not permitted to run any open source software on this system," they might be able to enforce this against existing customers and prevent distribution this way. Similarly, if Oracle required as part of their EULA that the customer avoid applications blacklisted by Oracle, then again you have a problem. But then that is what we have the Sherman Act for....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If you plan, want, or do not want others, to profit from your work, DON'T OSS. Don't come back two years later about how Sun is ripping you off by using your code, or how you deserve credit for it, blah blah.
Also, avoid reproducing patented or copyright material in your implementations.
I think you would benefit greatly from this book, as your opening statement is patently false.
Barry Hawkins site: www.alltc.com weblog: www.yepthatsme.com
Who is this supposed to be, the Sith? I have word from Yoda for you: A life you must get; different licenses for different needs you must embrace.
Barry Hawkins site: www.alltc.com weblog: www.yepthatsme.com
>Don't make me quote Netcraft
:)
Please do it
You don't? Well, then I'll do it.
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
--
Requiem for the FUD
I think the GPL pretty much sucks (compared to MIT/BSD licenses), but your FUD sucks even more.
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
> if they want the software to be free, they use the GPL
Only because of firebrand preaching from GPL fanatics. There are no other reasons.
It takes a somewhat different approach to the issue, with the focus on what you want to accomplish, rather than the technicalities of each license.
The incident everyone points to regarding linking and the GPL was Apple's proprietary objective C extensions for the GCC. IANAL, etc....
The FSF convinced apple that they were not allowed to keep this proprietary, and they released the source. Apple, BTW, was not distributing the GCC. My layman's analysis is as follows:
there is a huge difference between Apple's approach (that of extending a *specific application* to add functionality) and the approach of NDIS-Wrapper (enabling a broad range of executables to work based on a binary specification provided by a third party). The first is obviously derivative, but the second may not be. (Actually NDIS-Wrapper might be derivative of the Linux kernel but would probably not be a derivation on that Linksys driver you are trying to get to work.)
Of course, IANAL, but I have a hard time that merely linking to a library makes a work derivative. Of course different courts use different processes of analysis so this is anything but clear (in the 9th circuit we have the Gates' test). On the other hand, an application which adds specific functionality to a specific application where one depends on the other is different. I.e. the GPL does NOT prevent me from distributing a GPL'd application which uses ODBC with proprietary ODBC drivers precisely because the drivers don't depend on my application and any of the drivers will work.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
PS: I love *BSD!