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What are the main legal issues that can arise with free and open source software licensing?
These issues include, but are not limited to:
- indemnities against claims of intellectual property infringement from third parties.
- requirements of consumer protection and antitrust legislation.
- obligations to redistribute source, and when they arise.
- enforceability of free software licences.
What are the different types of open-source licenses?
Four are examples of open source licenses (which allow you to reuse code to some extent), and one disallows any reuse whatsoever.
- Public domain. This is the most permissive type of software license.
- Permissive.
- LGPL.
- Copyleft.
- Proprietary.
How are open source licenses enforced?
Because open source licenses flow directly from the author/owner to the licensee, the only party in a legal position to enforce the GPL is the author or owner of the copyright. Intermediate distributors do not have the power to enforce except with respect to any contribution they may make.
Why is the open source license not legal?
SCO claimed and maintains that any code that was GPL’d was done by employees without proper authorisation, and thus the license doesn’t stand legally. This is supported by the fact that for code to be GPL’d, the copyright owner must put a GPL notice before the code, and SCO itself was not the one to add the notices.
Who is the creator of open source software?
Jacobsen made code available for public download under an open source public license, Artistic License 1.0, which Katzer copied into their own commercial software products without recognition of the source of the code.
Who is the licensor of the GNU general public license?
Artifex is the exclusive licensor of the software product, ‘Ghostscript’, under the GNU General Public License Version 3. Hancom is a South Korean software company that used Ghostscript in software they were selling. This case concerned Hancom’s failure to distribute or offer to provide the source code for their software.
When did the Free Software Foundation Sue Cisco?
This was a lawsuit initiated by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) against Cisco Systems on December 11, 2008 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.