Book description
This book is a user manual for understanding and deployment of open source software licensing in business. Written for lawyers and businesspeople alike, it explains and analyzes open source licensing issues, and gives practical suggestions on how to deal with open source licensing in a business context. Including useful forms, information, and both technical and licensing background, this book will help you avoid legal pitfalls and edcuate your organization about the risks of open source.
Table of contents
- Copyright
- Preface
-
1. Leveraging Opportunities
- 1. Introduction: How UNIX Gave Birth to Linux, and a New Software Paradigm
- 2. Free Software and Open Source
- 3. Common Open Source Licenses and Their Structure
- 4. Due Diligence, License Proliferation, and Compatibility
- 5. Audits and Compliance Initiatives
- 6. Notice Requirements
- 7. Patents and Open Source
- 8. Trademarks and Open Source
- 9. Open Source and Open Standards
- 10. Developing a Corporate Open Source Policy
- 10A. Open Source Corporate Policy
- 11. Open Source Code Releases
- 11A. Open Source Trademark Policy
-
2. Understanding Risks
- 12. Technical Background: Operating System Kernels, User Space, and Elements of Programming
-
13. Enforcement of Open Source Licenses
- A.1. Past Enforcement
-
A.2. Enforcement Obstacles
- A.2.1. Lack of Track Record: GPL Has Never Been Tested in Court
- A.2.2. Waiver/Estoppel: Occasional and Selective Enforcement of GPL Means It Is Unenforceable
- A.2.3. Formation: GPL Is Not Validly Accepted by Licensees
- A.2.4. GPL Constitutes Copyright Misuse
- A.2.5. Joint Work Arguments
- A.2.6. Standing and Joinder Arguments
-
14. The Border Dispute of GPL2
- A.1. Defining the Border Dispute
- A.2. What the GPL Says
- A.3. Rules of Contract Construction
- A.4. Applying the Four Corners Rule to GPL2
- A.5. Applying the Rules of Contract Construction to GPL2
- A.6. Trade Usage and Other Extrinsic Evidence
- A.7. Derivative Works Question
- A.8. The Facts
- A.9. Legal Rules
- A.10. Analyzing the Case of Two Works
- A.11. Is the Result One or Two Works?
- A.12. Policy Arguments
- A.13. Non-U.S. Law Interpretations
- A.14. Approach of Legal Realism
- A.15. Outside the Four Corners
- A.16. Loadable Kernel Modules
- A.17. The Hardest Cases
- A.18. LGPL Compliance
- 15. License or Contract?
- 16. Defining Distribution
- 17. Open Source in Mergers and Acquisitions and Other Transactions
-
18. GPL Version 3.0
- A.1. What is the Effect of the Release of GPL3?
- A.2. Adoption of GPL3
- A.3. Politics and Context
- A.4. "Derivative Works" Problem
- A.5. "Propagation" and "Conveying"
- A.6. Patents
- A.7. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Provisions
- A.8. "Java Problem"
- A.9. Disabling and Obfuscation
- A.10. ASP Problem
- A.11. License Compatibility
- 19. LGPL Version 3.0
- A. Open Source Development Agreement
- D. Glossary
Product information
- Title: The Open Source Alternative: Understanding Risks and Leveraging Opportunities
- Author(s):
- Release date: February 2008
- Publisher(s): Wiley
- ISBN: 9780470194995
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