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SFLC's Legal Guide On Free Software

Posted by kdawson on from the law-for-the-rest-of-us dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week the Software Freedom Law Center published A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects. The primer, written for developers, has sections on copyrights, trademarks, patents, and organizational structure. Linux-Watch has reviewed the guide, saying 'I think any open-source developer or open-source group administrator must read this paper.'"

6 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. The Primer is nice and all... by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...and IANAL

    But, legally speaking, you should read the license you pick. Don't just assume any summary is correct. I am not saying this summary is not accurate, I am just reminding you that you actually need to read what you "sign".

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    1. Re:The Primer is nice and all... by RobBebop · · Score: 4, Informative

      The authors of this primer are lawyers. Sure, they have biased ties to the FSF, but there isn't a group of men on the planet better qualified to put together a concise explanation of the values, virtues, and gotchas of working with free and open source software.

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  2. Exactly what I was expecting by Secret+Rabbit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was expecting to read a biased view toward the GPL, etc. Went straight to the BSD(-style) section and it's exactly what I found. Not about what the BSD(-style) licenses do/do not permit, but a commentary about what features of the GPL aren't in the BSD and how that's "good" "according to some people."

    Gotta say that I've read a lot about licenses, etc and have yet to see one that isn't biased in one direction or another. And this is certainly no exception. I'd just love to see a commentary that keeps people's fucking politics out of it.

    1. Re:Exactly what I was expecting by Cannelbrae · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Can you expand on the pieces you view as biased? Most of it looks rather straight forward. They explained that bsd style licenses grants a freedom, explained why this freedom can be beneficial, and explained what you lost by (downstream openness) by selecting the license.

      That seems like a pretty simple and blunt explaination. Each license has pros and cons depending on need.

  3. Not sure it's the politics by l2718 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In this case, the politics are the indirect reason. I think the writers (which were all part of the "FSF" cadre) are simply more knowledgeable about the GPL-style licensing than about BSD-style licensing. They have considerable experience and expertise drafting and enforcing the GPL and LGPL, but they have not been, for example, part of the AT&T-Berkeley BSD litigation. The discussion of copyright enforcement would have been more interesting if it included examples of successful enforcement of both the types of licenses.

    The discussion of "copyright assignment" falls under the same heading: that's what the FSF does, and they are telling us what they learned about this kind of setup. Better they share their knowledge than leaving others to rediscover it.

    I think the best way to view this document is as follows: "we are laywers, who have been helping FOSS projects. Here are some lessons we learned, in non-technical language. Read this before talking to your lawyer and you'll get more mileage out of him/her".

  4. Re:I don't like the "you should..." bits by RobBebop · · Score: 4, Informative

    What I object to is the "you should ..." bits which indicate that the authors are suggesting courses of action. I'd rather just have the lawyers unwind the legalese and make it human readable and let me make the decisions as to what I should and should not do. This makes it feel like the authors have an agenda that they are pushing.

    The authors do have an agenda, which is to promote freedom. The authors are also lawyers and the reason they are saying "you should" read it is because it does unwind the legalese jargon in the F/OSS licenses and explains why you would want to use such a license.

    As far as framing it differently... the Software Freedom Law Center team includes a number of prominent individuals who have made strong arguments for Free Software in the past. Included in the board of directors is Lawrence Lessig and Eben Moglen. Maybe you've heard of them, maybe you haven't... but tens of thousands of people are knowledgeable about some of the work of these two men. Maybe you'd trust the word of one commenter that these are two noble, respectable men and my assurances that any concise documentation that they would publish is worth checking out.

    And I guess you have a right to be skeptical because there are tons of "articles" on /. that are just links to technorati or arstechnica or cnet... but this isn't one of them. This is one with authors who more interested in Free Software for Freedom's sake then the sake of steering traffic to their site to get ad revenue. Ya dig?

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