Other Corporate Licenses

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Open source software has been adopted by many of the world's largest software companies. While most have adopted one or another of the licenses already discussed in this book (either the GPL or one of the academic licenses), some of them also now distribute their own open source software under their own corporate licenses. Open Source Initiative now lists licenses from a number of major companies including Apple, Lucent, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Real Networks, Ricoh, Sun, and Sybase. (See www.opensource.org .)

Each of those licenses puts a spin on one or another licensing technique already described in this book. Examining each of them in turn would be unproductive. Every one of those licenses satisfies the Open Source Principles listed in Chapter 1, although they sometimes do it in unusual ways.

The specific provisions of each license matters, particularly if you intend to create and distribute derivative works. If you use open source software from those companies under their licenses, I suggest that you consult an attorney to make sure you honor your obligations.

For the most part, those licenses are intended for use by the company that placed its name on it. None of them is an effective template that can be used by licensors generally .

There are three important exceptions. The first, the Common Public License (CPL) written by attorneys at IBM, is described in Chapter 8. Two other template licenses which I wrote, the Open Software License (OSL) and the Academic Free License (AFL), are described in Chapter 9.

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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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