Software Licensing

11 Key excerpts on "Software Licensing"

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  eBook - ePub

  Linux Essentials

  • Christine Bresnahan, Richard Blum(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Sybex

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 2 Understanding Software Licensing

  Software is a type of intellectual property that is governed by copyright laws and, in some countries, patent laws. As a general rule, this makes it illegal to copy software unless you’re the software’s author. Open source software, however, relies on licenses, which are documents that alter the terms under which the software is released. As described in this chapter, open source licenses grant additional rights to software users.

  In general, open source software owes a great deal to three organizations: the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Open Source Initiative (OSI), and the Creative Commons (CC). Each organization has a distinct philosophy and role to play in the open source world. There are also numerous specific open source licenses, which are summarized at the end of this chapter, along with ways that businesses can use them.

  • Investigating software licenses
  • The Free Software Foundation
  • The Open Source Initiative
  • The Creative Commons
  • Using open source licenses

  Investigating Software Licenses

  Copyright law has existed for centuries and, as such, it wasn’t designed with software in mind. Nonetheless, copyright law does apply to software. Licenses that authors apply to their software interact with copyright law to create the specific rights that you have—and don’t have—to use, modify, and redistribute software. Thus you need to understand the basic principles, as well as the differences, between proprietary and open source license terms.

  Exploring Copyright Protection and Software

  A copyright

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  LPI Linux Essentials Study Guide

  Exam 010 v1.6

  • Christine Bresnahan, Richard Blum(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Sybex

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 2 Understanding Software Licensing Objective: 1.3 Open Source Software and Licensing Software is a type of intellectual property that is governed by copyright laws and, in some countries, patent laws. As a general rule, this makes it illegal to copy software unless you’re the software’s author. Open source software, however, relies on licenses, which are documents that alter the terms under which the software is released. As described in this chapter, open source licenses grant additional rights to software users. In general, open source software owes a great deal to three organizations: the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Open Source Initiative (OSI), and the Creative Commons (CC). Each organization has a distinct philosophy and role to play in the open source world. There are also numerous specific open source licenses, which are summarized at the end of this chapter, along with ways that businesses can use them. Investigating Software Licenses Copyright law has existed for centuries, and as such, it wasn’t designed with software in mind. Nonetheless, copyright law does apply to software. Licenses that authors apply to their software interact with copyright law to create the specific rights that you have—and don’t have—to use, modify, and redistribute software. Thus you need to understand the basic principles, as well as the differences, between proprietary and open source license terms. Exploring Copyright Protection and Software A copyright is, as the name implies, a legally recognized right to create a copy of something. In most countries, if you write a book, take a photograph, or create a computer program, you (and you alone) have the right to make copies of that book, photograph, or computer program

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  Open Access and the Humanities

  Contexts, Controversies and the Future

  • Martin Paul Eve(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  13 As will be seen, others disagree with such an assessment and find the rhetoric of ‘enabling’ reuse, couched in terms of ‘freedom’, to be misleading, particularly when funding agencies require that researchers apply such licenses to their work. As noted in Chapter 1, these licenses – and particularly the clauses that allow modification of work – derive from a history in computer science and open-source programming cultures. It is worth saying, however, that the contexts are slightly different, which may have a bearing upon the rationales for open licensing in the humanities as opposed to computer science. With a piece of computer software, there are usually two different aspects: the source code (which is text that can be read) and the compiled binary (which is the version that can be run). The process of authoring a program is (usually – there are exceptions) to write code (a series of instructions that tell the computer, sequentially, what to do) in a high-level language that resembles words and instructions familiar to speakers of the English language. These instructions are then fed to a ‘compiler’, which translates and optimises them into an object code (usually assembly or machine code), an extremely low-level format that is difficult for people to understand, but easy and quick for machines to execute. The important point to note, however, is that it is extremely hard, albeit not impossible, to change the behaviour of the program or to understand its workings without the original source code. It is also 92 Open licensing not easy automatically to change a program back from its compiled form to its source code. This explains the importance of open source (or ‘free software’ as he prefers it to be termed) within Richard Stallman’s philosophy of com- puter science. 14 In a world where we are surrounded by technology and somewhat at the mercy of software, he would argue, the obfuscation introduced by the compiler is a potentially powerful tool for control.

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  Innovation Happens Elsewhere

  Open Source as Business Strategy

  • Ron Goldman, Richard P. Gabriel(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Morgan Kaufmann

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 5 Licenses OPEN SOURCE IS A COMMONS-BASED ACTIVITY in which a community of people work on a shared artifact, in this case source code. Source code is covered by copyright law, which in the United States grants copyright to an author immediately upon completion of the piece. When copyright law in the United States was first written, the duration of protection was 14 years with perhaps an opportunity to renew it once. Now copyright extends until the death of the author plus 70 years. Software enjoys the same protections as any other literary work. In addition, software may contain the implementations of patented methods~called software patents. Currently, the copyright holder retains the right to strict control of the work, including copying, derived works, distributions, and public performance. Originally, copyright law tried to strike a balance between providing an incentive for creators and allowing other creators to build on works already created. The expansion of copyright protection has been rapid over the last 40 years as institutional content creators lobbied for expanded protection. A key to understanding open source as a business strategy is coming to terms with the idea that there is a middle ground between all rights reserved and the public domain. It is possible for a holder of intellectual property to carefully craft a description of rights the holder wishes to retain and freedoms the holder grants to licensees. Think in terms of some rights reserved or most rights reserved. Even when source code is visible and even downloadable on the Internet, the copyright and patent holders retain ownership of the material and, by licensing arrangements, control what they wish to control. In fact, copyright and patents are in place precisely to encourage people to create, invent, and put on display their creations and explain their inventions.

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  Biobazaar

  The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology

  • Janet Hope(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  Agreement is not absolute, however. Like any group that values active participation and deliberation, the open source soft-ware community subjects its own core values to constant debate and reinterpretation; reducing this multifaceted, dynamic discourse to clear, stable standards for the purpose of modeling the open source licensing approach outside software is not easy. But in any case, even the clearest such standards relate to the licensing of soft-ware, with all of its technical and legal peculiarities. To formulate a model of open source licensing for biotechnology, it is therefore necessary to approach the problem at a yet higher level of abstrac-tion. Software Freedom What is open source licensing all about? Contrary to one common misconception, open source licenses are not inherently anti-intellec-tual-property. It is true that for some open source programmers, the assertion of proprietary rights in support of a nonproprietary strat-egy is a deliberate attempt to subvert a legal regime they consider to be harmful or even immoral. Just as insurgent forces use captured weapons to arm themselves, these programmers employ intellectual property rights to undermine the use of intellectual property as a means of achieving exclusive proprietary control over technical in-formation. But there are also many open source licensors—includ-ing that patent colossus and co-architect of the knowledge game, Open Source Licensing • 149 IBM—who emphatically have nothing against intellectual property rights, regarding open source licensing as merely a useful addition to a legitimate but limited repertoire of proprietary strategies for exploiting intellectual property ownership. Similarly, although it is true as a general rule (see the next para-graph) that open source licensing does not itself generate significant revenue, it would be a mistake to conclude that open source licenses are inherently anti-or noncommercial.

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  Managing Digital Resources in Libraries

  • Linda S Katz(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  According to Circuit Judge Easterbrook, “A copyright is a right against the world” (ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 1454). Contracts, by contrast, generally affect only their parties; strangers may do as they please, so contracts do not create “exclusive rights” (ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 1454). Despite the drawbacks of contract law, contracts or licenses have proven to be a powerful legal tool to protect the interests of software developers or digital content providers no matter whether the software is custom designed or a mass-market product. The popularity of licensing agreements as a business operation model is the direct result of “private legislation” of copyright-type rights initiated by software developers (Chou and Zhou “Examining,” 48). Software developers believe that statutory copyright law and patent law do not provide adequate protection against pirates due to the nature of the software, since it is easily copied and distributed. More importantly, the software industry has imitated the business operation model of public utility companies to turn software sales into licenses or leases by charging customers a fee for use on a regular basis, thereby generating a continuous stream of income. To achieve this goal, they launched relentless assaults on two fronts. On the one hand, they lobbied Congress successfully to eliminate the First Sale Doctrine in the digital world, as evidenced by the passage of DMCA in 1998. On the other hand, they inserted very restrictive licensing terms into their software packages, and forced consumers to accept the terms and conditions unilaterally imposed by them without being aware of the fact that it is Software Licensing rather than software sale, notwithstanding the consumer understanding that it is the sale of software. This type of license is labeled as “shrink-wrap licensing agreements” since the retail software packages are covered in plastic cellophane shrink-wrap (Chou and Zhou “Examining,” 48). The “click-on license” is of the same nature. Digital content providers assume that consumers consent to the terms of the license by merely clicking on the screen button “I Accept” or by opening the software package.

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  Buying, Supporting, Maintaining Software and Equipment

  An IT Manager's Guide to Controlling the Product Lifecycle

  • Gay Gordon-Byrne(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Auerbach Publications

    (Publisher)

  Hardware designs that incorporate multiprocessors and multicore processors are challenging from a license pricing perspective. Many users discover late in the purchase process that their choice of a new processor has catapulted them into a new category of license fee for some element of their software stack. Even if the basic OS may be favorably licensed, third-party systems software products do not have to follow suit.

  Software maintenance of all OS and systems software products is always the domain of the provider. There are no legal options to acquire software service of proprietary products. Open domain versions of some old operating systems are available and can be serviced independently. Open systems/open domain products such as Linux are extremely attractive as alternatives to proprietary OS primarily to control the ongoing costs of software support.

  Usage-Based Licensing Models

  Application systems licenses are commonly priced according to the number of users (seats) and not just a single license covering all instances. Variations include licensing the number of concurrent users, such as with products used intermittently across a network or enterprise-wide licenses where a particularly large end user can offer a consistent block of revenue in exchange for less license management.

  Identifying and validating all the instances of the per seat or per instance contract is far more complicated than for licenses by serial number or even when tied to processing usage. Application vendors offering these options are wary about enforcement. It is common in these types of license agreements for vendors to require users to allow access to records of usage, login credentials, and any other tools that might be available to help validate usage. These same vendors are usually more aggressive in requiring audits. This is not surprising since the history of such licensing models has proven high levels of license misuse on the part of users.

  Maintenance and defect support for applications is the unique responsibility of the product developer. There is nothing done at the repair level that impacts applications, as the hardware must operate before the operating system and the OS operates correctly before the application.

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  Digital Copyright

  Law and Practice

  • Simon Stokes(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Copyright: computer programs (object code) and their preparatory design materials (source code, etc) are defined as literary works under section 3, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA)). User manuals and software licences in printed or electronic form will also be protected by copyright and possibly database right in certain cases. This reflects the provisions of the Software Directive which are key in this regard.

  (b) Rights in confidential information: the high level code generally used to write software (source code) is typically kept confidential – only the object code, the machine readable instructions in binary format (01010 etc), and related user manuals and licences, are distributed to users.

  (c) Patents: software which has a ‘technical effect’, for example, it enhances PC memory capacity or operates or controls a technical process, and is otherwise novel and inventive can be patented.3

  (d) Designs/topography right: for semi-conductor products.4 As noted in chapter one , these rights are outside the scope of this book.

  (e) Registered designs/trademarks: following case law and revisions to the Registered Designs Act 1949, to take account of EU legislation, it appears that computer icons, software fonts and on-screen displays are eligible for registered design protection on the basis they are ‘graphic symbols’.5 Trademark protection may also be available.

  (f) Contract/Software Licensing: because software needs to be copied in order to run and be used it is distinct from other literary works such as a book (which need not be copied in order to be read). Software owners will typically prescribe by way of a copyright licence (a contract) what rights users have to copy/reproduce, transfer and modify the software and for what purposes. It is desirable to clarify what use rights a user has, as from a licensor’s perspective a licence ‘to use’ software will potentially be given a broad interpretation.6 Licensors do not have complete freedom of contract here; in addition to consumer protection legislation (if relevant), licensors must have regard to Competition Law (see chapter five ) and European law (the Software Directive – see below). Software Licensing is given further consideration in chapter seven

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  Information Technology Law

  • Uta Kohl, Andrew Charlesworth(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  A rightsholder could potentially limit the scope for resale by licensing their software for a fixed term – perhaps of ten years; or prohibiting transfer of their maintenance and support agreements. However, in the former case, switching to term licences be unattractive to customers; and in the latter case, given that the support costs of software may exceed the initial licence fees, there may be incentives for rightsholders to continue to support software that has been transferred. The software industry’s shift towards providing software via cloud services (see ‘Software as a service’ (SaaS) below) with access to software provided on a subscription basis, allows for a scenario where no software is delivered to the subscriber, and a rightsholder should thus be able to rely on the provisions of the InfoSoc Directive (2001/29/EC), wherein the provision of services over the internet will not result in exhaustion.

  Free and open source Software Licensing (F/OSS)

  166

  As was noted at the beginning of this chapter, when computers entered the commercial marketplace in the 1950s, software was not considered as an item to be sold separately. As Campbell-Kelly and Garcia-Swartz note in their longitudinal analysis of IBM’s changing policy towards supply of software, companies such as IBM initially bundled basic software with their hardware, and actively collaborated with their customers in developing software specific to their customers’ needs. During this period, there were essentially no independent software producers, so if IBM wanted to sell (or lease) its computers, it either had to produce the software itself, or rely on its customers to generate it using the basic software utilities that IBM provided. In order to facilitate this, IBM provided the source code for all its programs to its end-users – the source code was ‘open’.167

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  Perspectives on Patentable Subject Matter

  • Michael B. Abramowicz, James E. Daily, F. Scott Kieff(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  105 Although this argument could in theory be compatible with exclusive or nonexclusive licenses, the assumption tends to be that an academic researcher would have sufficient time for only one exclusive licensee. However, in comparison to the life sciences, software (particularly pure software) is an area of invention where knowledge is likely to be relatively codified. Object-oriented programming is based on principles of modular design, and one of the reasons that open source methods of software production have been successful is that the development task can be broken up into modular 100 See Cohen et al., supra note 13, at 5–30 (examining the diverse methods used by R&D labs to protect profits made from their inventions, as well as the diverse motives to patent across different industries). 101 See generally Jeannette Colyvas et al., How Do University Inventions Get into Practice, 48 Mgmt. Sci. 61 (2002) (discussing eleven case studies from Columbia University and Stanford University). 102 In addition to differential incentive effects, university patents and licenses have different informational effects across different industries. Of particular relevance to our study, the comprehensive Carnegie Mellon survey, conducted on a broad range of large and small firms in the early 1990s, indicates that outside of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, industrial R&D managers rate patents and licenses very low relative to other sources of information on public research (e.g., publications, conferences, informal interaction with university researchers, and consulting). See Cohen et al., supra note 13, at 4–5 (surveying various sizes of firms and their R&D managers). Even within the pharmaceutical industry, patents and licenses were less important than research publications and conferences. Id. 103 See supra note 12 and accompanying text. 104 To be sure, such costs may be higher in situations where the software is not pure software.

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  Intellectual Property Licensing and Transactions

  Theory and Practice

  • Jorge L. Contreras(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. 7. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program’s being part of a par- ticular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program’s license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distrib- uted on the same medium must be open source software. 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface. Industry- and Context-Specific Licensing Topics 604 Notes and Questions 1. The OSI definition. OSI’s definition of OSS is clearly inspired by Richard Stallman’s ideas, but is phrased in more neutral language.

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