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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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.
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.
Though it is often overlooked today in favor of its counterpart digital music protection, software content protection is an extremely serious issue, and many contend that it has the potential to stunt the growth of technology if it is mishandled. The debate concerns software piracy (often simply using a program you didn’t actually pay for), and the proper legal protection that should apply to such software programs. Due to space constraints, I intend to confine our discussion here to an overview of the software patent and copyright issues in the United States and the UK – two of the world’s most advanced countries with widespread software development and use, and therefore great potential for misuse. And as no treatment of this issue can be complete without a look at its ethical ramifications, I will finally propose a solution to the software protection problem, and justify it with ethical as well as pragmatic motivations.
Open source vs. proprietary: Both have advantages By John Carroll, Special to ZDNet, Retrieved May 19, 2008 from [http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,2000061733,39148762,00.htm]
When Tim Berners-Lee created the Internet as a non-proprietor, not-for-profit information conduit, he could not have predicted how controversial digitized intellectual property would become. Prior to the Internet, intellectual property was a fairly straightforward issue. It was protected with copyright, trademark, and patent legislations, which granted exclusive rights to owners. Violations were not as abundant because distribution was constrained by time and space. Moreover, violators were identifiable because anonymity was difficult to achieve. In today's "global village" however, digital information such as books, music, software and art can be instantly shared between two anonymous users, without any fee to the creator. Legislation is much more difficult to enforce.
In 1970s, the software was firstly subjected as intellectual property. Stallman felt if the software-based computing idea was treated as an intellectual property and controlled as proprietary, then he as a hacker[2] no longer could read the source code, find the problem, and fix the problem in the MIT lab community. It would be a major drawback to the freedom in technology from social and moral perspective. So Stallman quit the job in MIT and found Free Software Foundation[3] in 1984 as a nonprofit organization that provides various types of software such as: GCC compiler and Emacs editor. He created the General Public License (GPL)[4] as a legal document to prevent free software from being turned into proprietary. GPL is also known as copyleft[5]. To most of Stallman’s supporters and open source hackers, “non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.”[6]. The main theme of free software is the moral freedom – the cultural and legal freedom to ac...
"Software piracy is the unauthorized duplication, distribution or use of computer software". Five main types of software piracy exist: publisher patent and copyright infringement, industrial piracy, corporate piracy, reseller piracy, and home piracy. Software piracy is a large global issue, which has become a more pressing issue due to a number of reasons: software is now easier to distribute on a global scale due to global access to the internet; culturally, people have not been taught that copying software is like stealing; a physical component does not need to be manufactured; and finally individuals state that they cannot afford the high cost of software and state that they would not use the pirated software if they had to pay for it.1
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
What this means is that the program that is used here will feature a source code that is open for all people to adjust. It also allows for people to make all of the adjustments that they make to the program open to the public provided that it is distributed with the same license terms as what was used in the original program. It must not restrict any software or other functions in a computer and it must not be given out with a cost attached to it (OSI 1).
Open source software is a software that can be used by anyone without any charge needed and it will be freely used and available in modification and enhancement. The benefit of open source software in business is the need of a simple version application that can be customize or making an enhancement such as word processing or any easily editable website.
Imagine if you will, you just finished reading an amazing article and want to share it with your colleagues, you copy a section and send it out in an email. Did you just commit copyright infringement? Did you just violate someone’s rights as the creator of that intellectual property? To better understand what copyright is you must first understand the difference between copyright, public domain and fair use. Another important aspect to the copyright debate is the definition of intellectual property. When someone creates or originates a piece of work or materials, it is considered to be copyrighted by that individual and cannot be used, adapted, copied or published without the creator’s permission. In the computing world, according to Bowles (2013), data is also known as intellectual property. Even though there are copyright laws which aim to protect intellectual property, when there are not enforced, intellectual property is
Many years have passed since the first pirates emerged on the sea, but they still exist and have extended their scope of action. Meaning of the word ‘’pirate’’ has changed and now can be defined as the person who illegally makes a copy of someone’s property. Music, films, books and software on hard media can be pirated by consumers. According to Gopal and Sanders (1998 381) software piracy is the operation of simulating original software which is against the law for any purpose. Such illegal acts could seriously affect industry and society. For instance, losses of software industry profits because of piracy were $12.8 billion in 1993 (Austin American-Statesman 1994), it shows that a large number of software products were pirated. Therefore, piracy is a major problem for the advance of the software industry and consumers. This essay will cover causes and effects of software piracy. There are four main reasons why the piracy of software is easy and widespread, economic development, legislation, reliability of pirated copies and consumer’s attitude. Software piracy has the intellectual impact on society and the financial effect on the industry. This essay also will provide the combat process and analyze some proposed solutions in order to determine the effective solution.
As the Internet has became more prevalent, the need for copyright protection there has also become a necessity. Today, copyright law has adapted to protect Internet articles, as adapted over the years to protect various other new
• [SE advocates] have climbed a social ladder for a few decades and are now fighting against a tide of open source software that seems to be bringing bazaar anarchy and taking the well-deserved control out of their hands. Part of this is their utopia of "software engineering" by some magic cathedral approach which has never worked and whose failure the authors of these utopias tend to blame on the lack of control that copyright offers them over their projects. The strange thing here is that they have had the chance to put all these things into practice in their university haven. But, strangely enough, the more successful university projects are carried out in a bazaar-like open-source manner. -- Hartmut Pilch
The aim of this paper is to define the terms ‘Information and Communication Technologies’ (hereinafter ‘ICT’ without emphasis), ‘ICT Security’ and ‘Open Source Software’ (hereinafter ‘OSS’ without emphasis). This paper will focus on discussing the concept of ‘ICT Security in OSS’ suggested in well-known sources (The UNESCO 2007; Bakari 2007; Open Source Software Work Group 2010; Australian Government Information Management Office 2011).