Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing

by Andrew M. St. Laurent

Book Overview

If you've held back from developing open source or free software projects because you don't understand the implications of the various licenses, you're not alone. Many developers believe in releasing their software freely, but have hesitated to do so because they're concerned about losing control over their software. Licensing issues are complicated, and both the facts and fallacies you hear word-of-mouth can add to the confusion. Understanding...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596005814
• ISBN13: 9780596005818
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 193 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

easy understanding and cover everything you wanna know

this book covers all of modern open source license which i wanted to know. also, it explain them very easy understanding way.

A Worthwhile Introduction to Open Source Licensing

Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing Andrew M. St. Laurent http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/osfreesoft/ When sharing with others that I was reviewing an O'Reilly book through their User Group & Professional Association Program, the first question was always the same: "What book are you reviewing?" After saying the title was "Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing", responses ranged from "What's that?" to "Well, you won't have any trouble sleeping!" One might think that this list of people included relatives and coworkers who were not attuned to the open source community and its issues. On the contrary, the responses came from those within my circle of acquaintances that include software developers, system administrators, and even an intellectual property lawyer. Licensing is not exactly the sort of topic where people slide forward in their seats and ask to be told more. Such is the appeal of software licensing; however, the importance of understanding licensing, particularly within the context of open source development, cannot be overstated. Those familiar with the O'Reilly product offerings have no doubt seen or purchased one or more their Pocket Reference series (http://pocketrefs.oreilly.com/). They are not comprehensive references, but rather convenient guides for a specific topic to provide the sort of information one is not likely to have committed to memory, particularly as the trend of having cross-disciplined technologists continues. This book could be considered the analog of pocket guides for open source and free software licensing. Open source licenses and their legal interpretation are subject matter that easily warrant a "pocket reference" that is a full-sized book of nearly 200 pages. Frankly, reading through a software license and maintaining a reasonable level of comprehension is a rather tough job. The author manages to make the task far more bearable and fruitful at the same time; a difficult balance to strike. The pace of the annotation works well to break up the various licenses (twelve in total) into bite-sized chunks. Chapters 2 and 3, which address the BSD/MIT family of licenses and the GPL/LGPL/MPL family of licenses respectively, each end with a section titled "Application and Philosophy" that serves as a sort of reward for making it through the license and establishes a touchstone to summarize and provide meaningful context for what has been covered. The annotations of the different licenses are a great introduction, but the book should not be considered as a complete reference for open source licensing issues. The book seems to affirm this at points where the author indicates that particular topics fall outside the book's scope, even to the point of recommending experienced legal counsel for certain issues. It also has a wonderful collection of footnotes and reference to other resources to allow the reader to flesh out topics of interest beyond the focus of this work.

Great book for those of us who just want to code!

I've had a good hour or so to sit and read through "Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing, by Andrew M. St. Laurent (Oreilly 2004 - ISBN: 0596005814) and thought I would share my opinion on it. Let me first begin by saying that the author did a great job of being concise. I'd had some free time today, and was at first hesitant to begin, as I thought it may be too dry for a saturday afternoon. St. Laurent did a great job of reeling me in though, with a quick, easy to understand example of basic copyright as it stands in the US, along with brief explanations on how closed-source and open-source licensing influences that copyright. The book then goes into different types of open source/free software licensing: GPL, LGPL, Apache, Qt, Creative Commons, BSD, etc - all of the usual suspects, and then some. Then, in chapter 5, the author talks about "Closed Source" licensing, for the reason being that "understanding proprietary licenses can also be important, as companies...(are) attempting to reap some of the benefits of a more open development model." Chapters 6 and 7 get to the heart of the matter, discussing the legal aspects, derived works and forking of OS projects, choosing a license and even the "negative" aspects of OS licensing. I would say that the author deserves your hard-earned sheckles for this book. He does a good job of delivering a widely debated, legal topic to the folks who need to understand it the most, software developers and their IT collegues.

Brings more life to a dry subject

I say in the subject that it brings 'more' life to a dry subject because I review Prentice-Halls "Open Source Licensing" a while back and found that it brought life to the subject of licensing, but this book is better. First off, it's not just annotated licenses. The first chapter and the last few chapters provide a perspective on licensing through the perspective of the open source software developer. That is invaluable. Without perspective the book is simply translations of legal mumbo jumbo. These perspective sections provide a mental framework for understanding the need for licensing and how it fits into the software development life-cycle. I highly recommend this book to those who are confused by the morass of open source licenses. It effectively clears away the fog and provides both perspective and translation on this difficult subject.

Compares and contrasts free and open source licenses

I think the book accomplishes what it sets out to do quite well. Let's be clear, it's a book about licenses and legal issues. If you're not a lawyer, don't try to read this without your favorite caffeinated beverage within reach. If you are considering releasing software under a free or open source license, this book does a fine job at comparing and contrasting the different types of existing licenses. It gives you examples from existing software projects of what types of things may happen with your software based on which type of license you choose to distribute your code under. On the flipside, if you are considering using some of open source software in a commercial project, this will give you pointers as to what types of things you can and can't do with software licensed under the various free and open source licenses. The author's explanations are easy to understand. It also describes the Sun Community Source License, which explains what you can and can't do with the Java source code, for example, which I found interesting. The only thing I didn't find an explanation for was why every license needs to USE ALL CAPS SOMEWHERE in the text... =) The book does what it sets out to do; compare and contrast the various free and open source licenses.