Packaging Open Source, by Mark Webbink
Feb 05, 2010, 21:02 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Pamela Jones)
"There is an article by Mark Webbink, Esq., "Packaging Open
Source", in the International Free and Open Source Software Law
Review, Vol 1, No 2 (2009) that I think you'll find interesting. It
compares various FOSS licenses and how they handle compilations and
collective works. The context of the article is specifically
packaging Linux with an application into a software appliance, but
the descriptions of the licenses and how they work are broadly
useful in other contexts as well. I am republishing the article
here because many of you face choices about what license you will
use on your works, so you also need to understand, and others of
you are lawyers who would like to understand FOSS licenses
better.
"Mark was at Red Hat and is now Visiting Professor of Law and
Executive Director of the Center for Patent Innovations at New York
Law School. He's also on the board of the Software Freedom Law
Center. So whether you are a lawyer trying to understand FOSS
licenses or a programmer trying to decide what license to use on
your work, X marks the spot. The article is also available as a
PDF. I couldn't help but notice the part that SCO lawyers
apparently didn't understand about GPLv2:
"Finally, GPLv2 does not include an express patent license
grant. Rather, in Section 6 the GPLv2 makes clear that no other
restrictions can be imposed on recipients, which would include any
restriction arising from a patent held by the distributing party.
In section 7 the GPLv2 makes clear that, if conditions are imposed
on the distributing party that would interfere with the rights
granted under the license, the distributing party is not to
redistribute the software."
Complete
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