Foss Licensing Primer

FOSS: Licensing Author: Shun-ling Chen © UNDP-APDIP, Elsevier, 2006, 29 pages ISBN-13: 978-81-312-0422-1

Description

COMING UP SOON: IOSN and UNDP-APDIP releases new publication on Free/Open Source Software and Licensing http://www.iosn.net/licensing/foss-licensing-primer/

As the FOSS Movement has been growing rapidly in recent years, more and more stakeholders are brought in to participate in different roles. Some of them are end-users, developers, business entities, or government agencies that provide funding for FOSS projects. This e-primer is designed to provide these stakeholders with some basic knowledge about copyright, software copyright and FOSS licenses. Legal issues may vary in different situations and this e-primer may not be able to provide answers to all situations. But, hopefully, it will serve as a bridge between lawyers and non-lawyers in this joint venture of FOSS development.

This e-primer examines different proprietary and FOSS licenses that use copyright law to regulate the use of software, and discusses how the FOSS movement uses licenses as a way to create a different model of software development. It provides scenarios to highlight possible copyright issues regarding the use of FOSS by end-users, developers and vendors, and addresses common questions and misconceptions regarding copyright and licensing issues. The e-primer also includes two cases regarding government-sponsored FOSS projects.

More Information

This e-primer is part of the Free/Open Source Software e-Primer Series. For other publications in this series, please visit http://www.iosn.net/publications/foss-primers