Cumbria LUG: Licensing: Open Source’s Unique Advantage

“Free and open source software is defined as such by the licence
it is distributed under. Whether or not a particular piece of
software can call itself Free Software or Open Source depends
entirely on its licence. The Linux kernel is distributed under the
GPL, and is therefore Free Software. Similarly, Microsoft’s Windows
Installer XML (WiX) toolset is released under the Common Public
License. Since this is an OSI-approved licence, this software is
open source. It is the licence terms that set open source apart
from proprietory, closed source software.

“However, licensing seems to be rarely mentioned as a reason for
using open source software. Microsoft are fond of claiming that
businesses using open source software risk losing their
intellectual property, although they rarely explain that
claim…”

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