Acknowledgments

I will be forever grateful for the encouragement and assistance of Michael Einschlag, my mentor, my law partner, and my friend of many years . He's the most brilliant attorney I know, and his counsel about patent and contract law through many drafts of this book was invaluable.

We stand on the shoulders of giants. I had the good fortune to learn about open source from the leaders who created it. I want to thank them all but can only name a few special ones who influenced me and taught me about software freedom and open source: Bruce Perens, Peter Deutsch, Eric Raymond, Russell Nelson, Brian Behlendorf, Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, Danese Cooper, Guido van Rossum, and Michael Tiemann. Anyone who knows these players knows that we disagree among ourselves about more than a few licensing matters, but we all agree that software freedom is a grand goal. I couldn't and wouldn't have written this book without them.

It is impossible to name all the contributors to the various licensing lists I monitor, but thank you all for expressing yourselves so eloquently. I've stolen many of your (unpatentable) ideas for this book. Special thanks go to John Cowan, M rten Mickos, Scott Peterson, Mark Webbink, Dietmar Tallroth, Tim O'Reilly, Brian Fitzgerald, Dan Ravicher, and Rod Dixon, who may not realize how important their help and inspiration have been for writing this book. Thanks.