Free and open source software has become an integral part of the modern internet age. As a result of the threat posed by copyright laws sponsored by proprietary software companies, the free software community has developed many software licenses to combat copyright and protect the developer. Many open source licenses have ben used by developers to release their programs to the community. Some of the most popular licenses are the Apache License, the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Each of these licenses gives different rights for the licensor and the user of the license. Each license also has implications on the availability of the code to the future developer community. The GPL more strongly encourages the continuation of “decentralization of individual labor” as described by Yochai Benkler (Benkler, 2006) than the Apache license. While the GPL most closely embraces the idea of free and open source software, the Apache License allows proprietary software and open source software to coexist in the context of the modern internet age. The Apache License is a positive link between the open source and the proprietary software worlds.
The most popular free software license, the GPL (Metz, 2012), is a free software license developed by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. The GPL is a restrictive license that Stallman called “copyleft” because it is a protection against copyright and encourages developer collaboration. The main feature of the GPL is the stipulation that when someone modifies a program and releases it to the public, the source code to that program must be licensed under the GPL. The source code must also be freely available to the users of the...
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Metz, C. (2012, February 15). Open sourcers drop software religion for common sense. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/cloudera-and-apache/
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Philip Crawley, 9 Oct 2010. Web. The Web. The Web. 6 Jan. 2014.
The notion that software should be free is one that is highly critiqued within the technology industry. Free, as in the idea that users can obtain the source code for any given program, and modify and redistribute it as they like. Currently most all software produced is proprietary in nature. Corporations pay developers to create proprietary software that they then obstruct (so that no modifications can be made), and sell (to turn a profit). Richard Stallman has been fighting the idea of proprietary software, and specifically software ownership, for decades. Stallman holds the stance that software ownership is a detriment to society, and stifles innovation, education, and social cohesion.
Web. The Web. The Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Cohen, Judy, and John Richardson.
Web. The Web. The Web. 20 Apr. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
Web. The Web. The Web. 20 Apr. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
A new law will probably be introduced into state legislatures which will govern all contracts for the development, sale, licensing, and support of computer software. This law, which has been in development for about ten years, will be an amendment to the Uniform Commercial Code. The amendment is called Article 2B (Law of Licensing) and is loosely based on UCC Article 2 (Law of Sales), which governs sales of goods in all 50 states. A joint committee of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) and the American Law Institute is drafting the changes to the UCC.
Information and Software Technology Years 7–10: Syllabus. (2003, June). Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_sc/pdf_doc/info_soft_tech_710_syl.pdf
The Internet has most publicly impacted Copyright legislation and thus this essay will focus on it specifically. Copyrights are ìoriginal works of authorship in any tangible medium of expression, Öfrom which the work can be perceived, reproduced or otherwise communicated, either directly or withÖ aidî (Bird, p.86). Not only has its existence and understanding been heightened by the general public, but violations against it have ìincreased on the Internet as far as its use and what is being used.î (Medieval Romance, p.1) ìNever before has it been so easy to violate a copyright ownerís exclusive right to copy.î (Bird, p.86) The Internet has increased piracy, it has changed legislation for both creators and infringers, it is been the precursor for harsher punishments to violators, and it has clouded jurisdiction principles.
Providing Full-Text Access to Eric Digest. n.p. 2003. The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the Web. The Web. The Web.
Hamister, J., & Braunscheidel, M. (2013). Software piracy and intellectual property rights protection. Academy of Information & Management Sciences Journal, 16(1), 15-35. Retrieved from EBSCOhost
Copyright, in its first form, was first introduced in 1710 with a British statute of Anne. Since this time copyright laws have changed to remain current, and have grown into an international agreement by many countries around the globe.
Copyright came about in the fifteenth century in Britain, sometime after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. “The printing press represented a supreme threat to the clergy’s monopoly on idea dissemination; moveable type was the fifteenth century version of Napster” (Copyright Website). Copyright laws were instated to protect authors of various intellectual properties, (literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, architectural) and give credit to the proper author. Over the years copyright laws have changed dramatically, because of the development of the internet. Before the internet in order to be caught plagiarizing someone would have to read through all sorts of literary works, to know exactly where the information came from. These days a person can just type what they are looking for into search engine sites like “Google” and fine exactly what they were looking for. With information accessed with such ease it makes it almost effortless to plagiarize (the act of stealing others ideas, and passing them off as your own), other peoples work without the author having any idea. "The Internet has been characterized as the largest threat to copyright since its inception. The Internet is awash in information, a lot of it with varying degrees of copyright protection. Copyrighted works on the Net include news stories, software, novels, screenplays, graphics, pictures, Usenet messages and even email. In fact, the frightening reality is that almost everything on the Net is protected by copyright law. That can pose problems for the hapless surfer” (Copyright Website). The electronic environment does not change the ways we consider ownership, it does however change the ways in which we use and distribute intellectual propert...
The Web. The Web. 4 Nov. 2013. Patchin, Justin W., Joseph A. Schafer, and Sameer Hinduja.
For UNIX truly to be an open system, The Open Group provides certification and standardization for UNIX-like operating system, thus regardless of different UNIX-like environment the standards set by The Open Group are the same, therefore it helps eliminate confusion and achieve consensus among the various interests of the members of the standards-forming bodies. Several standards have come about as the direct result of computer users’ desire to see UNIX standardized and to see it evolve in a direction compatible with present use as well as future needs. Standards are at the basis of the concept of open systems (Dunphy 1991, 44).
Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, D.B.A. 2006, Cases on information technology : lessons learned,Vol 7, Hershey, Pa. : Idea Group.