“From the concept of copyleft to the status of community
projects, free and open source software (FOSS) raises endless legal
issues, many of which are subject to rumors and misconceptions
floating around the community. To help reduce the confusion for
those managing software projects, the Software Freedom Law Center
(SFLC) has released a freely distributable guide entitled ‘A Legal
Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects.’ Although
only 45 pages long–shorter if you don’t count the front
matter–the primer still manages to provide a highly structured
introduction to these issues that carefully outlines options and is
full of practical advice.“‘We actually started working on the legal guide a couple of
years ago,’ says SFLC counsel James Vasile, who coordinated the
project…”