Licensing

Disclaimer

I am not an attorney. None of this constitutes competent legal advice. None of it.

"Open" IP

• Movement for collective creation

• Typically focused around copyright, source code

• Idea: License away individual rights

• Two flavors:

  • Vanilla ala Creative Commons, Open Source
  • "Viral" ala GPL

• Licenses at http://opensource.org

Adding Your Marks

• My README.md:

  ## License
  
  This work is released under the "random license".
  Please see the file `LICENSE` in this distribution for
  license terms.
  

• My LICENSE file

  Copyright © 2020 Bart Massey
  
  This work is released under the "random license".
  
  Random License text yadda yadda
  

• Every file in my program (ideally):

  /* This work is released under the "random license".
     Please see the file LICENSE in this distribution for
     license terms. */
  

Protecting your IP

• Send "cease and desist" (C&D) letter

• Sue! But then you lose

  • If defendant is found to be non-infringing, you will have wasted time and money

  • If defendant is found to be infringing, you will still have wasted time and money

  • Note that the attorneys on both sides win either way

Collective Copyright

• What happens when you accept contributions from others: all contributing parties collectively hold copyright on the work

• This is a mess from an IP law point of view; also, relicensing tends to be impossible

• Common alternative is "copyright assignment": contributors must assign their copyright to the organization

• This is a pain in the neck and discourages contributions, especially when the organization is a commercial entity

License Compatibility

• What happens when parts of the software are under "incompatible" licenses?

  • If the licenses disagree on their terms, the whole licensing scheme may be invalid — in fact, the work may thereby infringe one or more of the licenses

  • (Note that in the absence of a valid license, no one can legally use the work.)

• What happens when parts of the software are under "compatible" licenses?

  • Effectively the work contains a new synthetic license

  • The most obvious case: if part of a work is GPL, but other parts are under some compatible more permissive license, the work as a whole becomes GPL