December 1st, 2005
Preparing for upcoming sessions on Free and Open Software licensing
Over the next few months, I need to prepare for a series of sessions on contracts, copyright and licensing - especially as they pertain to Free Software and Open Source.
To do this, I plan on writing a series of concise articles that answer common questions in this topic area.
I have a draft list of questions, but am very interested in knowing what other people want to know.
Please take a moment or two to:
- suggest new questions and/or
- comment on the list of draft questions below
My draft list of questions is:
- what is copyright?
- what is a software license?
- what does the GPL mean?
- I have used GPL software in my own software and released it, what does the GPL require me to do?
- what Free Software/Open Source license should I choose?
- how do I license my software under some Free or Open license?
- I/we made some horrible mistakes in licensing our software - how can we fix it?
- we broke a GPL'd license agreement, how do we fix it?
- can a company use a trademark to stop me from distributing GPL'd software?
- how do I migrate my software from one license to another
- my company wants to use FLOSS in our product. How can we do so safely?
- company X is violating the GPL, but only for their own product. What can I do?
- what is a derivative work?
- what business models exist around Free Software/Open Source
- how can I make money from my Free Software/Open Source software?
- how can I/we build a good relationship between our company and the Free Software/Open Source community?
- how does the GPL interact with scripting languages or SQL?
What else do you want to know?
Tags: community, Copyright, FLOSS, Free Software, License, Licensing, Open Source, Trademark, UncategorizedRelated posts
Posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 18:40
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December 2nd, 2005 at 19:19
I'd like to know why people think that the applicability of the GPL depends on whether the application is written in a compiled or an interpreted language.
December 2nd, 2005 at 22:51
Heh. The session will focus on supporting developers who know little about Free Software and Open Source licensing, and less on those who wonder why many developers don't understand Free Software and Open Source licensing. :)
However, this is still a good question - thanks! :)
December 5th, 2005 at 6:54
Vishnu Gopal has some interesting questions with regards running a hosted service based on GPL-licensed software: http://vysnu.com/log/2005/12/04/gpl-and-commercial-services.html