Simmons ASIS&T News & Events
Software Licensing for Information Professionals
Tuesday November 15th, 1:00pm
P207 (Palace Road Building)
Public Domain? Open Source? Freeware? Shareware? Commercial? Please join us for a brief, informal introduction to and discussion of software licensing models, restrictions, rights, and practices. Pizza will be served. (As if you didn't know.)
POST-EVENT UPDATE:
A licensce is a document which lays out the conditions under which you can use, modify, copy, or distribute software. Some basic types of licenses are commercial, shareware, and freeware. Commercial licenses are usually site licenses, which allow software to be copied across multiple machines within an organization. Shareware is software that is available for a trial period, after which time the user may be asked to pay for that software. If acknowledgement of payment is not received, the software may stop working. Freeware is software that is free to use but may not be modified or sold.
An alternative to copyright is copyleft. Copyleft uses copyright law to license not only free use, but also guarantees the right to alter and distribute the product. The GNU General Public License (GPL) is perhaps the most famous example of copyleft. It gives away not only the software but also the source code. The only requirement is the free distribution of the source code. This does not necessarily mean the free distribution of the software itself, just the source code. The GPL is a viral license, meaning that any software that incorporates source code that is covered under the GPL must also adhere to the GPL.
Many licenses fall somewhere in between the two extremes of freeware and traditional full copyright. Creative Commons offers alternatives to full copyright in an easy to understand format that is backed up by a copyright document in legalese.
In the networked world of Web 2.0, it is necessary to give developers access to your source code (or APIs) so they can build functionality onto your existing software products, thereby making them more useful to more people. Even Microsoft is beginning to recognize the need for simplified liceses. They are releasing their specification which extends RSS under a Creative Commons License.
(Presenter: Michael Klein. Attendees: 18
updated November 28, 2005 by Frances McConihe