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Intellectual Property and Open Source
stoolpigeon writes "There isn't a person writing code in this country who is not impacted by US intellectual property laws. I think that it is safe to say, that not all coders have a strong understanding of just what those laws are, let alone what they mean. Stepping into this gap is programmer become lawyer Van Lindberg with his new book Intellectual Property and Open Source. Lindberg has really done something special with this volume. I don't think I've ever read a tech oriented work where I've felt so convinced that I was reading something that would become a standard by which others would come to be judged." Read below for the rest of JR's review.
Intellectual Property and Open Source
author
Van Lindberg
pages
371
publisher
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
rating
10/10
reviewer
JR Peck
ISBN
978-0-596-51796-0
summary
A practical guide to protecting code.
Let me quickly state what this book is not. It is not comprehensive. It does not cover all of US law on intellectual property. What it does cover is mostly viewed from a high level that does not address many finer points. It is not a reference for IP laws outside of the United States. While there is some commonality in various parts of the world, I think the differences preclude this book from being too useful for anyone not impacted by US law.
So what is this book? To me it felt very much like sitting down with a lawyer who can speak my language, understands my concerns, uses open source software, cares about freedom and has a gift for building metaphors and illustrations that make sense. It is that ability to bridge the gap between lawyer and developer and do it in an readable way that makes this such an incredible book. If it were just accurate and thorough but I couldn't get past a couple pages it wouldn't be worth much. If things weren't put into terms that I could grasp and apply to real life situations, the same would be true.
The first seven chapters are a primer on the history and current status of U.S. IP law. Lindberg walks the reader through patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, contracts and licenses. He discusses how these impact inventors and developers. I had considered myself to be somewhat familiar with most of these, but was surprised how much I learned. I was also a bit scared by the time I was done with it all. Lindberg cites not only the pitfalls that are out there, but backs it up with case history that illustrates his points. More than once I caught myself thinking, "I guess that is possible but it is unlikely." only to be reading a page or two later about how it had already happened and was in some cases still finding its way through the courts. This was all quite a wake-up call for me.
Chapter eight and on deal with how one can operate in the open source world. Lindberg talks about just what Open Source is and then handles the many things that a developer needs to consider from how to handle a new idea (especially if one is employed) to choosing a license, accepting patches, reverse engineering without being as likely to get sued, and setting up a non-profit to run a project.
I found the discussion on various licenses and just what they mean to be especially helpful. There is a general discussion that covers a wide array of licenses, and then a separate chapter just for working with the GPL. There is an illustration in that chapter that I think stands as an excellent illustration of what this book is like. "The Darth Vader Scale of Derivative Works", found in chapter twelve, serves to illustrate the Free Software Foundation's position on the applicability of the GPL. Lindberg takes time and care to explain the issue, but the figure showing a range from little "Anny" to the fully cloaked and helmeted Darth Vader shows how he also makes it fun at the same time.
It is not absolutely necessary to read through the book from start to finish but I would highly recommend it. The conversational style makes it easy to do, and there are concepts and metaphors that Lindberg reuses throughout the book that will be easier to understand if the reader has familiarity with their use right from the start. That said, the table of contents, index and topical separation of chapters will make this useful as a reference. I would just agree with Lindberg that reading it through first will make such use easier in the future.
The book has appendices that contribute over 80 pages to the total length. These include a sample Proprietary Information Agreement, a list of Open Source licenses ( along with some descriptions of how they are used), a Free Software license list, a list of the licenses used with Fedora on a grid that lists GPL compatibility, the full text for a number of licenses and a very nice GPL Compatibility Matrix. That matrix shows what versions of *GPL licenses can be used with one another from the perspective of adding code to an already licensed project or licensing a project that will include code already licensed under one of the *GPL licenses.
Some of the sections are quite sobering. I don't think becoming more educated about these issues is going to encourage people that things are headed in the right direction. That said, I don't think they will arrive at that conclusion because Lindberg is pushing a particular point of view. He is very even handed in his approach and it is obvious that he took great pains to focus on one single goal, disseminating accurate and valuable information without letting anything else get in the way. He leaves value judgments to the reader. When there are issues of debate he presents information on both sides, and may express his leaning but does not argue for it or attack other view points.
This book may be frustrating for those who just want copyright and all intellectual property laws to go away. I get the sense that while Lindberg believes that there is a lot of room for improvement, he isn't trying to describe what could or should be, he is just giving advice on how to try and best navigate what is. Right now, the penalties for failing to understand the current environment can be quite harsh, and so I think that such a guide is very important. This extremely approachable and useful book is must reading for anyone creating or contributing to FOSS projects.
You can purchase Intellectual Property and Open Source from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
So what is this book? To me it felt very much like sitting down with a lawyer who can speak my language, understands my concerns, uses open source software, cares about freedom and has a gift for building metaphors and illustrations that make sense. It is that ability to bridge the gap between lawyer and developer and do it in an readable way that makes this such an incredible book. If it were just accurate and thorough but I couldn't get past a couple pages it wouldn't be worth much. If things weren't put into terms that I could grasp and apply to real life situations, the same would be true.
The first seven chapters are a primer on the history and current status of U.S. IP law. Lindberg walks the reader through patents, copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, contracts and licenses. He discusses how these impact inventors and developers. I had considered myself to be somewhat familiar with most of these, but was surprised how much I learned. I was also a bit scared by the time I was done with it all. Lindberg cites not only the pitfalls that are out there, but backs it up with case history that illustrates his points. More than once I caught myself thinking, "I guess that is possible but it is unlikely." only to be reading a page or two later about how it had already happened and was in some cases still finding its way through the courts. This was all quite a wake-up call for me.
Chapter eight and on deal with how one can operate in the open source world. Lindberg talks about just what Open Source is and then handles the many things that a developer needs to consider from how to handle a new idea (especially if one is employed) to choosing a license, accepting patches, reverse engineering without being as likely to get sued, and setting up a non-profit to run a project.
I found the discussion on various licenses and just what they mean to be especially helpful. There is a general discussion that covers a wide array of licenses, and then a separate chapter just for working with the GPL. There is an illustration in that chapter that I think stands as an excellent illustration of what this book is like. "The Darth Vader Scale of Derivative Works", found in chapter twelve, serves to illustrate the Free Software Foundation's position on the applicability of the GPL. Lindberg takes time and care to explain the issue, but the figure showing a range from little "Anny" to the fully cloaked and helmeted Darth Vader shows how he also makes it fun at the same time.
It is not absolutely necessary to read through the book from start to finish but I would highly recommend it. The conversational style makes it easy to do, and there are concepts and metaphors that Lindberg reuses throughout the book that will be easier to understand if the reader has familiarity with their use right from the start. That said, the table of contents, index and topical separation of chapters will make this useful as a reference. I would just agree with Lindberg that reading it through first will make such use easier in the future.
The book has appendices that contribute over 80 pages to the total length. These include a sample Proprietary Information Agreement, a list of Open Source licenses ( along with some descriptions of how they are used), a Free Software license list, a list of the licenses used with Fedora on a grid that lists GPL compatibility, the full text for a number of licenses and a very nice GPL Compatibility Matrix. That matrix shows what versions of *GPL licenses can be used with one another from the perspective of adding code to an already licensed project or licensing a project that will include code already licensed under one of the *GPL licenses.
Some of the sections are quite sobering. I don't think becoming more educated about these issues is going to encourage people that things are headed in the right direction. That said, I don't think they will arrive at that conclusion because Lindberg is pushing a particular point of view. He is very even handed in his approach and it is obvious that he took great pains to focus on one single goal, disseminating accurate and valuable information without letting anything else get in the way. He leaves value judgments to the reader. When there are issues of debate he presents information on both sides, and may express his leaning but does not argue for it or attack other view points.
This book may be frustrating for those who just want copyright and all intellectual property laws to go away. I get the sense that while Lindberg believes that there is a lot of room for improvement, he isn't trying to describe what could or should be, he is just giving advice on how to try and best navigate what is. Right now, the penalties for failing to understand the current environment can be quite harsh, and so I think that such a guide is very important. This extremely approachable and useful book is must reading for anyone creating or contributing to FOSS projects.
You can purchase Intellectual Property and Open Source from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
....but does it have pictures and draw in the line colour pages?
Linux blog http://nsajeff.com/blog
This book may be frustrating for those who just want copyright and all intellectual property laws to go away
I'm sure that won't stop them from quoting everything negative about IP law from the book here on /. while omitting the other side. But omitting the other side has become par for the course on the internet, TV, radio, print, etc...
Sounds great, like getting a book on storage media and having 50 pages about punch cards.
Previous cases affect judicial rulings as much as the law, therefore having a large portion of it devoted to the history makes sense, whereas storage mediums don't rely on anything in the past except what they want to remain interoperable.
That's why I live in an offshore oil rig! I can code to my heart's content, and I'm not affected by silly intellectual property and copyright laws!
Muhahahaaa!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
I know case studies are important, but it would be nice to see more statisical evidence of the impact of bad IP policy in addition to anecdotal.
Can I bum a sig?
Sounds great, like getting a book on storage media and having 50 pages about punch cards.
Which may not be as important in the tech industry, but in order to comprehend what laws mean you do need to know the history behind them. Laws, when interpreted by a judge, are viewed in context of the conversations and laws that preceded them, and thus it is important to understand where they came from.
I now leave you to continue trolling.
This book is compromise. It concedes that the existing oppressive legal structure is acceptable and should be worked within. You and I disagree. We cannot continue to allow our work, our pride, our joy, our sweat, our tears, our time, our energy, and our creativity to be cajoled and enslaved into an oppressive and unfair system. This book should be bought, scanned, and posted as a offering to the great god of the open source, and the god of open ideas. Pay homage ye minions... pay homage.
Is this an "open sauce" project?
Paper is soooo last century.
"This book may be frustrating for those who just want copyright and all intellectual property laws to go away. I get the sense that while Lindberg believes that there is a lot of room for improvement, he isn't trying to describe what could or should be, he is just giving advice on how to try and best navigate what is. Right now, the penalties for failing to understand the current environment can be quite harsh, and so I think that such a guide is very important. This extremely approachable and useful book is must reading for anyone creating or contributing to FOSS projects"
Can we have this is a stickie for every IP story posted?
There is a general discussion that covers a wide array of licenses, and then a separate chapter just for working with the GPL.
[...] a list of the licenses used with Fedora on a grid that lists GPL compatibility, the full text for a number of licenses and a very nice GPL Compatibility Matrix. That matrix shows what versions of *GPL licenses can be used with one another from the perspective of adding code to an already licensed project or licensing a project that will include code already licensed under one of the *GPL licenses.
Wow, GPL by itself is as complicated and hard to explain as all other licenses put together?
I think that it is safe to say, that not all coders have a strong understanding of just what those laws are, let alone what they mean.
I think one of the main reasons I don't have a strong understanding is because this kind of stuff is so mind-numbingly boring. I can't seem to get through the first paragraph of any legal mumbo-jumbo without wanting to ... Speaking of legalese, you practically have to go to law school to understand what they are saying. Sometimes they don't even use proper sentence structure. (Not that I have any room to talk.)
My point is, this stuff is boring, and I doubt there will ever be a widespread understanding of it all until it either becomes simpler, or affects us to a large degree, or maybe if it's explained using some kind of car analogy.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
So what you're saying is that anyone's opinion other than Richard Stallman's is irrelevant and useless, that the very use of the term "intellectual property" must immediately eliminate any attempt at rational discourse, and that going to the effort to illustrate a complex issue like this one using popular, easy to understand allegories must be rejected as "industry propaganda". Without further thought, no less.
Thanks, that makes sense. I'm sure I'm going to buy this book now, considering how unfocused, biased and rather hysterical most of the FSF's essays that you recommend on the matter tend to be.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
There isn't a person writing code in this country who is not impacted by US intellectual property laws
You misspelled "imaginary"
</pedant>
Free Martian Whores!
Is it me or is all this legal crap on slashdot really f*cking boring?
What happened to "News for nerds stuff that matters"? :-/
It's turning into "News for lawyers, stuff no one gives a sh*t about..."
Yeah so any book that doesn't agree with your view point or the view point of the FSF is propaganda? You really need to stop drinking the koolaid. I love how someone who is such a strong advocate for freedom is so quick to want to suppress something that *gasp* may disagree with your reality. Not everyone likes the GPL, it doesn't make them evil, freedom hates, or employees of Microsoft. It just makes them people who don't prefer the GPL. There are plenty of people who provide source code openly that don't agree with Stallman's world view, like the BSD folk. Just go on the OpenBSD mailing list and see the threads back and forth between openBSD devs and Mr Stallman.
A lot of people would say that most of your posts on Slashdot are equally "propaganda" if you use your definition as the standard.
Turn based strategy game that runs over XMPP. Phalanx
If you buy it directly from O'Reilly they also offer a DRM-free pdf version, or book/pdf bundle:
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960/index.html
I'm glad to see this becoming more common, I'd like to have pdf version of more books I use for reference. Digital search is so much faster than flipping through a book, even if the Index is accurate.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
He doesn't treat GPL code like Darth Vader. You didn't read what I wrote. It is a scale illustrating how FSF views derivative works - ranging from mere aggregation (Anny) all the way to incorporation (Darth Vader). In between are plug-ins, dynamic linking and static linking.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
There
is
no
such
thing
as
intellectual
property
!
Case closed.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Nerds DO need to know this stuff so some moron doesn't steal their work.
Yeah, I'm guessing that ccguy might not live in America. First because of his complaint about "this country", but also because my understanding is that not all countries have the same sense of precedence that the US legal system does.
At least in the US, what other courts have ruled in the past can be determinant of how future judges will rule. Also, it's my understanding that judges are allowed to look at the intent of the laws, which could possibly connect to the history of the law.
I talked to an Austrian lawyer once who claimed that European courts often don't stress precedence quite as much as US courts, and are a little more free to rule on the wording of the current law and their own judgment. I have no knowledge about it myself, but don't have any reason (so far) to disbelief that lawyer. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
In any case, if you're writing about a set of laws, it seems worthwhile to me to talk about the past laws to give an idea of "how we got here". Of course, if someone were writing a book on storage media and could find 50 pages of interesting information about punch cards, I wouldn't object to that either.
Is this an "open sauce" project?
I didn't know Frankie Howerd read slashdot.
geek to creep
Unfortunately, aggregation is not a derivative work under US copyright law. If anything, it's a compilation. On first blush, I don't even think static linking creates a derivative work.
That's all a matter of some discussion - which is what the author explains - this is one figure in a larger treatment of the topic.
The reason I brought it up is because I think it gives some idea of how Lindberg works to make the book fun and readable while dealing with what can be rather dry material.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
nice troll
You are completely right. A case decided does not change anything, except it was decided by the highest courts.
New decisions are published and discussed in juridical journals, but all this means is that there is something called "majority opinion" about how some of the cases should be decided. But a case decision following a "minority opinion" is as valid in the findings of law as a decision following the "majority opinion".
So having an important case decided in a lower court and published and discussed in a juridical journal just means that most judges will take this decision as a kind of guideline for their own decisions. It somehow tilts the expectations of the outcome, but it is far from being final on the matter.
But it confuses a lot of people because the FSF's statements about linking don't match the text of the new license AT ALL. (I expect some of their statements were simply cut'n'pasted from GPLv2 documents without re-analysis.)
Eben Moglen made GPLv3 applicability 100% clear when he explicitly defined (in Section 0. Definitions) the terms "conveying", "modify", "based on" and "covered work" (all applicable), and explicitly denied applicability of the license when "making an exact copy" or "executing GPLv3 code on a computer". GPLv2 had previously confused the issue by using the term "derived", which many people thought meant mere "usage", so the new separation in GPLv3 was extremely well conceived.
Alas, RMS still lives mentally in the GPLv2 era, because he still thinks the GPL applies to unmodified execution through dynamic links, when GPLv3 explictly denies that as a license taint vector.
So yeah, the situation is messy if you listen to the FSF. But read the GPLv3 text yourself and the situation is much improved, as the license is very clear and explicit now.
Aside from being one of twitter's 14 accounts, this one seems to be a particularly obnoxious name troll, one of quite a few. A quick look at the 'deadzero' comment page reveals nothing more than trolling and stalking.
By the way, I'm pretty jaded but I'd hardly consider the OPs comment an 'ad hominem'. As opposed to the last link in the paragraph above, where you call someone a paytard, for example.
It's the difference between Common Law, as used in the British Commonwealth and former British colonies like the US, and Civil Law as used most other places. In Common Law countries, using a law professor's article in an argument would at best be ignored and at worst get you laughed out of court if it didn't conform to precedent; but in Civil Law countries it may well decide the case.
And the brethren went away edified.
This is not always true. The unreasonable man theory holds here (although it will often damage that man's bottom line)
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
'It has become fashionable to describe copyright, patents, and trademarks as "intellectual property". This fashion did not arise by accident--the term systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion. Anyone wishing to think clearly about any of these laws would do well to reject the term.'
davecb5620@gmail.com
*yawn* Sockpuppets, as usual.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I like how you completely disregard the other ~200 countries and assume that we are all US citizens. But then, Europe is part of the USA, isn't it? ;)
Jesus christ, what a moron. No wonder you're a legend around here.