275 lines
6.5 KiB
HTML
275 lines
6.5 KiB
HTML
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>Good licensing and copyright practice: the theory</TITLE
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>Software Release Practice HOWTO</TH
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><DIV
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CLASS="sect1"
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><H1
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CLASS="sect1"
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><A
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NAME="licensetheory"
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></A
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>4. Good licensing and copyright practice: the theory</H1
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><P
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>The license you choose defines the social contract you wish to set up
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among your co-developers and users. The copyright you put on the software
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will function mainly as a legal assertion of your right to set license
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terms on the software and derivative works of the software.</P
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><DIV
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CLASS="sect2"
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><H2
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CLASS="sect2"
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><A
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NAME="copyrights"
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></A
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>4.1. Open source and copyrights</H2
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><P
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>Anything that is not public domain has a copyright, possibly more than
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one. Under the Berne Convention (which has been U.S. law since 1978),
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the copyright does not have to be explicit. That is, the authors of a
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work hold copyright even if there is no copyright notice.</P
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><P
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> Who counts as an author can be very complicated, especially for
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software that has been worked on by many hands. This is why licenses
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are important. By setting out the terms under which material can be
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used, they grant rights to the users that protect them from arbitrary
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actions by the copyright holders.</P
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><P
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>In proprietary software, the license terms are designed to
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protect the copyright. They're a way of granting a few rights to
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users while reserving as much legal territory is possible for the
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owner (the copyright holder). The copyright holder is very important,
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and the license logic so restrictive that the exact technicalities of
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the license terms are usually unimportant.</P
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><P
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>In open-source software, the situation is usually the exact opposite;
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the copyright exists to protect the license. The only rights the
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copyright holder always keeps are to enforce the license. Otherwise,
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only a few rights are reserved and most choices pass to the user. In
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particular, the copyright holder cannot change the terms on a copy you
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already have. Therefore, in open-source software the copyright holder
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is almost irrelevant — but the license terms are very important.</P
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><P
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>Normally the copyright holder of a project is the current
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project leader or sponsoring organization. Transfer of the project to
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a new leader is often signaled by changing the copyright holder.
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However, this is not a hard and fast rule; many open-source projects
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have multiple copyright holders, and there is no instance on record of
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this leading to legal problems.</P
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><P
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>Some projects choose to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation,
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on the theory that it has an interest in defending open source and lawyers
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available to do it.</P
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></DIV
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><DIV
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CLASS="sect2"
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><H2
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CLASS="sect2"
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><A
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NAME="opensource"
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></A
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>4.2. What qualifies as open source</H2
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><P
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>For licensing purposes, we can distinguish several different
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kinds of rights that a license may convey. Rights to <EM
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>copy
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and redistribute</EM
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>, rights to <EM
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>use</EM
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>,
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rights to <EM
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>modify for personal use</EM
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>, and rights to
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<EM
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>redistribute modified copies</EM
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>. A license may
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restrict or attach conditions to any of these rights.</P
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><P
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>The <A
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HREF="http://www.opensource.org"
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TARGET="_top"
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>Open Source
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Initiative</A
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> is the result of a great deal of thought about what
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makes software <SPAN
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CLASS="QUOTE"
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>"open source"</SPAN
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> or (in older terminology)
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<SPAN
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CLASS="QUOTE"
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>"free software"</SPAN
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>. Its constraints on licensing require that:</P
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><P
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></P
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><OL
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TYPE="1"
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><LI
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><P
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>An unlimited right to copy be granted.</P
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></LI
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><LI
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><P
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>An unlimited right to use be granted.</P
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></LI
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><LI
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><P
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>An unlimited right to modify for personal use be granted.</P
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></LI
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></OL
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><P
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>The guidelines prohibit restrictions on redistribution of
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modified binaries; this meets the needs of software distributors, who
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need to be able to ship working code without encumbrance. It allows
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authors to require that modified sources be redistributed as pristine
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sources plus patches, thus establishing the author's intentions and an
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<SPAN
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CLASS="QUOTE"
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>"audit trail"</SPAN
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> of any changes by others.</P
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><P
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>The OSD is the legal definition of the `OSI Certified Open Source'
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certification mark, and as good a definition of <SPAN
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CLASS="QUOTE"
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>"free software"</SPAN
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> as
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anyone has ever come up with. All of the standard licenses (MIT, BSD,
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Artistic, and GPL/LGPL) meet it (though some, like GPL, have other
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restrictions which you should understand before choosing it).</P
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><P
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>Note that licenses which allow noncommercial use only do
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<EM
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>not</EM
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> qualify as open-source licenses, even if they
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are decorated with <SPAN
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CLASS="QUOTE"
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>"GPL"</SPAN
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> or some other standard license. They
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discriminate against particular occupations, persons, and groups.
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They make life too complicated for CD-ROM distributors and others
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trying to spread open-source software commercially.</P
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></DIV
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>Next</A
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>Good project- and archive- naming practice</TD
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