Alternatives to Open Source

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Alternatives to Open Source

There are many ways to license software. None is legally privileged. Contract law allows parties to license software under almost any terms and conditions that people can dream up. Copyright and patent law acts as a backstop, preventing anyone from copying, modifying, distributing, making, using, or selling protected software without the licensor 's permission ”but otherwise leaving to the parties themselves the terms and conditions of their licenses.

Open source software distribution is a young but maturing business model. Enormously successful software has been created and is available worldwide, usually for free. Despite this success, companies often refuse to "go all the way" with open source, afraid that giving software away for free is contrary to their profit motive.

At one extreme, of course, there is fully proprietary software that cannot be copied , modified, or distributed. Source code is not available, reverse engineering is forbidden, and none of the copyright rights are given away. (Remember, though, that you don't need a separate license to install a copy of software you own, and to make backup copies; see 17 U.S.C. 117.) This model remains quite successful in the market, as anyone can plainly see. Proprietary software will doubtless continue to thrive.

In between fully proprietary and fully open source models there are other software distribution alternatives as well. This chapter describes some of those variations that pay homage to open source but don't quite go all the way. These licenses are, one might say, partly proprietary and partly open source.

Each of the licenses described in this chapter provides source code to licensees . You will remember from Chapter 1 that source code is but the means to an end; it is not an end itself. (Open Source Principle #4.) The real goal is software freedom, as reflected in the right to use for any purpose, to copy without payment of royalties, and to freely create and distribute derivative works. (Open Source Principles # 1, 2, and 3.)

The problem with all of the licenses described in this chapter is that they fail to fully promote software freedom. Their terms are far more reasonable than typical proprietary software licenses, but the software they license is not truly free.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't accept software under them. Some of them are good licenses, just not good enough to be open source.

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Open Source Licensing. Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law
Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law
ISBN: 0131487876
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 166

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