The relationship between the patent system and software hasn’t always been clear. Software is a unique construction, incorporating both creative and functional aspects. While creative aspects of software are protected under copyright law, the functional aspects of software may be protectable via patent law.1 The interaction between patent law and open source licenses is the focus of this chapter.
Open source is a restaurant
[[Chad Whitacre]] makes a great analogy around when/how software gets paid for, vs food. Open Source is a restaurant. At a restaurant, you eat your meal fir...
Open Source is a cost-allocation system
Because the right to use the software is not tied to payment, the license does not connect the people who benefit, the people who decide, and the people who bear the costs. Projects have to build those connections deliberately through governance.
Open Source vs. Closed Source Software – What’s the Difference?
This article will take a look at the two different softwares, and compare them through the topics of development, support, flexibility, and cost. Open Source Vs. Closed Source Explained.
Chapter 1. Introduction
Free software — open source software[3] — has become the backbone of modern information technology. It runs on your phone, on your laptop and desktop computers, and in embedded microcontrollers for household appliances, automobiles, industrial machinery and countless other devices that we too often forget even have software. Open source is especially prevalent on the servers that provide online services on the Internet. Every time you send an email, visit a web site, or call up some information on your smartphone, a significant portion of the activity is handled by open source software.
Open source is NOT a business model (and your business will fail if you think that it is)
I do not agree to the use of my copyrighted content for the training of AIs, LLMs, or similar technologies.
Sorting out the Ethical Licensing Mess
Software developers who give the world, for free, usage rights to the code they write often use open source licenses to make this gift legally explicit. These free usage rights (and then some) are …
The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source
The following commentary is part of First Monday's Special Issue #2: Open Source. Open Source developers have, perhaps without conscious intent, created a new and surprisingly successful economic paradigm for the production of software. Examining that paradigm can answer a number of important questions. It's not immediately obvious how Open Source [1] works economically. Probably the worst consequence of this lack of understanding is that many people don't understand how Open Source could be economically sustainable, and some may even feel that its potential negative effect upon the proprietary software industry is an overall economic detriment. Fortunately, if you look more deeply into the economic function of software in general, it's easy to establish that Open Source is both sustainable and of tremendous benefit to the overall economy. Open Source can be explained entirely within the context of conventional open-market economics. Indeed, it turns out that it has much stronger ties to the phenomenon of capitalism than you may have appreciated.
The intellectual property rights imperative of single-vendor open source
I guess everybody knows it but nobody ever named it, as far as I know, so I’m doing it here: The Intellectual Property Rights Imperative of Single-Vendor Commercial Open Source Always act in …
Open source and the software supply chain
Managing something as esoteric as resources for building software with a variety of contributions made by the open source community is more amorphic.
Mx. Aria Stewart (@aredridel@kolektiva.social)
I knew it was this way but it's really hitting me today how much the Open Source movement and copyright maximalism supplanted the idea of free software, and again how much the Free Software movement turned from a close ideological cousin of the remix and open culture movement into a culture of legalism. At the same time, copyright law itself has been extended to be near-immortal copyrights rather than brief monopolies to spur creation by enabling profit from creating works.
Single-Vendor Open Source Firms (and Their Intellectual Property Strategies)
Dirk Riehle, dirk@riehle.org An edited version was published in Computer magazine, April 2020 Abstract This article present a particular business model for commercial open source firms, called the …
Open Source is Not Enough
by James Halliday // The open source movement has fundamentally changed how software gets written. But in the process, corporations have been given a vast gift of free labor.
How open-source software took over the world | TechCrunch
It was just five years ago that there was an ample dose of skepticism from investors about the viability of open source as a business model. Fast-forward to today and we’ve witnessed the growing excitement in the space.
Study about the impact of open source software and hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy
This study aims to investigate the economic impact of Open Source Software and Hardware on the EU economy.
Considerations When Open Sourcing a Project
One of the most frequent questions I receive not only from engineers, but from other lawyers is “we are thinking of making a project available under an open source license – what do we …
When Free Software Isn't (Practically) Superior - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
The Open Source Initiative's mission statement reads, “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”