How to Understand Open Source Licenses
With over 80 licenses approved by Open Source Institute, it is almost daunting to imagine how organization can keep track of licenses of the codes they are using. To make the matters worse, vendors are not limited to these standard licenses, if they have codes which they would like to make available as an open source, they are free to pick standard licenses and make a variation of them. GPL and GPL version 2 has been the most commonly used public license. General public licenses are designed to allow users to have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (they can charge for them, if they wish), users can receive source code, users have freedom to change software or use pieces of it for new programs. Users who distribute these open source software are expected to transfer the same freedom to their recipients, and to show their recipients the terms of the license in order to let them know their rights. Users who distribute open source software must ensure others can receive source code as well. GPL clearly states that it does not offer any warranty. This is done to protect the author and developers. Any modified version of the software must be clearly stated as modified in order to protect the author of the previous version. GPL version 3 was introduced in 2007 to address some of the unforeseen issues which could not be protected by GPL version 1 or 2 and as explained by DR. Richard Stallman; the founder of GNU Project, these were not things he could see in the 1989, when he wrote the first GPL. Some of the issues that GPL faced included: Tivoization; this occur when manufactures of GPLed software devices rig their software such that, only they can change it but not the owner. When a device thwarts the owners effort to make changes, it is known as Trivoization. Discriminatory patent deals; such as the case of Microsoft where Microsoft was telling people that were running free software that they would not sue them for patent infringement as long as the vendors were paying Microsoft for that privilege, this is seen as not in accordance with freedom of open source. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the European Union Copyright acts make it a criminal to write or share software which can break Digital Restrictions Mismanagement of DVD and other media. License with Copy left attribute are tricky because they require the users to pass their modified code as open source, this might not be in line with their business model. A famous example is that of Microsoft where one of their developers picked a code off source code from a GPL software to build an application, this was bundled in windows 7, someone detected it and Microsoft had to halt the launch of Windows 7 whilst they tried to figure what to do with it, eventually they decided to release that particular application as open source. There is dual licensing where a vendor can release product under two licenses; one GPL and second one could be restrictive in order to develop an income stream examples are Red Hat which has Enterprise version and MYSQL.Download Free e-books on; how to work from home, a super fast method for product creation, how to create your own killer products in 5 easy steps, steps by step niche profit and lastly learn how to profit from Twitter and WordPress. Click here: https://hotmoneyproduct.com/index.php/FreeInternetMarketingProducts Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Understand-Open-Source-Licenses&id=4724632] How to Understand Open Source LicensesComments [0]
