“Looking back, I now see that, in contrast to the situation of a
decade ago, licenses are not the hard part. An understanding of the
legal interpretation of FOSS licenses is, of course, important.
However, experience with licenses is now such that legal analysis
is a small part of what requires attention and resources.“Even analysis of the GNU General Public License (GPL) is not
the hard part. My actual experience with that license has been that
the kinds of issues that have engaged (and entertained) lawyers
(such as myself) through innumerable hours of legal discourse
represent a small fraction of actual cases. In the main volume of
GPL-related activity, attention is on the basics–like actually
making the GPL-licensed source code available and otherwise getting
the details right.“So, what has proven to be more difficult than I would have
anticipated? It is keeping track of everything that needs attention
and taking all of the steps that need to be taken.”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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