Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law

by Lawrence Rosen

Book Overview

I have studied Rosen's book in detail and am impressed with its scope and content. I strongly recommend it to anybody interested in the current controversies surrounding open source licensing. - John... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0131487876
• ISBN13: 9780131487871
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

This is the "go-to" reference for OpenSource licensing

I purchased this book 18 months ago, along with two other references. Since that time, I have learned that when I have a question, this is the book to turn to first. In fact, I haven't read the others since first buying them. This week we had a request to license some code under the CPL. Not only does this book cover that license, but it has a chapter interpreting each of the clever sections, and its repercussions. As both a licensee and licensor, I have yet to come across an issue which this book did not address. It is the single volume you need.

Must-read for licensors

I have studied and compared Open Source licenses for a number of years. I came to the conclusion that the licenses created by Mr. Rosen were the best and I adopted one of them for my own Open Source projects. I have also read his book on the subject and I have concluded that it is also the best in its field. I recommend his book as a must-read for licensors of Open Source content.

Great for reference

When I recieved this book I was excited, finally I could read a book which would help my brain really understand all the licenses! I sat down to read it, and was impressed with how the author took the popular licenses and broke them down into more easily understandable. I mean, they *are* fairly straight forward, but the author gets into what they actually mean in legal terms, and that's interesting. Unfortunately it turns out that reading about specifics of Open Source law is not terribly interesting to me (I guess I'll never be a lawer) After the few introduction chapters I had to stop reading straight through it and skip around and skim the parts that interested me. In my case this is not such a good book for snuggling up with in front of the fire (some computer books are), but it is a fabulous reference book, written for us mere mortals.

Readable and by a Lawyer.

Open source software is growing explosively around the world. The SourceForge web site now lists 87,006 projects being done by 912,545 people. That's almost a million people writing code, probably more than all of the programmers employed by Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc. etc. The code being produced is distributed free of charge. Free of Charge, but not without restrictions. This book, written by the general counsel of the Open Source Initiative is intended to explain the various licenses that are in common use in the Open Source Community. It is written in English, not lawyer-speak, and intended for developers, managers, users and of course lawyers. If this is what you need to know, you'll not find a better source.

Makes the uninteresting as interesting as it could be

I have to admit it, there are few topics less interesting to me than open source licensing. But somehow Lawrence has turned this dry subject into something palatable for me. He runs through all of the general topics for each license (e.g. intellectual property, distribution, etc.) and then works through the commonly used licenses. It also gives a chapter on how to choose a license, which is much appreciated. I can't say that this is a casual fun read to take on a vacation with you. But if you are choosing a license and you have no idea what you are doing, then this will be an informative read that will help you make that decision.