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Summary: This blogpost is based on a presentation addressing software licensing issues associated with open source licensing.
On 15th June, I had opportunity to attend BCS (British Computer Society) IET (The institution of Engineering and Technology) joint networking event organised in London. The event was called “Open source-should I? Shouldn’t I” however scope of discussion was around LEGAL aspects about adopting & developing on Open source software.
Presented by: Dai Davis, Chartered Engineer & Solicitor
Key highlights
Copyright:
- Copyright laws are century old, much longer than computer software ever existed.
- Copyright laws were extended from Books, movies, art, sculpture to Software
- Copyright laws have their local jurisdiction; however they are extended internationally through cross country treaties.
- Copyright owner/author retains copyright for their lifetime plus 50/70 years
- Copyright laws are not particularly suitable for computer programs; however that is only law which protects intellectual property rights of computer program owner. (Patent laws are being used for similar purpose but they are difficult to implement)
- European council directive of 1991 explicitly talks about copyright laws related to computer programs.
- According to law a developer or designer (human) is considered as author even if the work is produced for someone else. However this does not apply to employees because they work for the company.
- Manifest is copyrighted; NOT the idea behind it. So even if all word processing programs work in similar way they have different code written behind it hence they do not infringe on each other.
- Since manifest is protected instead of idea behind it; there is no monopoly over idea itself. So you can write completely new book using plot of Harry Potter and it would not infringe on copyright of its author.
- Copyright infringement is “Civil” case; however if it is done in the “course of business” then it becomes Criminal case. Having said that there are negligible criminal cases in history.
- Registration is not necessary for copyright protection; your work is automatically protected.
Software license:
- Software is protected by copyright law and software license governs provisions of its usage by its user. It may have clauses related to time, geography, transferability, network, number of concurrent users, sharing and so on…
- Software license can dictate anything its owner wish; for example a software license can read “only allowed to use on every alternative Tuesday and user must wear blue hat while using this software”.
- Considering above, every proprietary license is different and unique in its provisions.
- Infringement of software license is considered as copyright infringement.
Open source:
- There are 180,000 active open source projects
- There are 1400 different types of open source licenses in use. GPL, Creative Commons and Apache are most common licenses.
- Definition of “Open source” varies however it is considered to have following elements:
o Free (freedom!) re-distribution
o Free access to source code
o Free license of derived works
o Non discriminatory license (users, geography, type of business, technology)
- It is believed that Open source projects are FREE (i.e. £0); it may not be always case.
- Most open source licenses are written in US legal language which may be too difficult to uphold in UK legal system.
- According to GPL license you have to re-submit any improvements made in original product back to community under GPL license again. This stops companies taking GPL product, modifying it and re-distributing under other license.
- There were only couple of cases in last 20 years about open source license infringement. So it is unlikely that anyone will drag you to court over infringement. It does not make economical/commercial sense to sue anyone over open source software.
- Key drivers for adopting open source software are: 1) Freedom to modify code as needed 2) No need to re-invent wheel 3) OR because open source software meets requirement which any proprietary software fails to meet.
Q&A session:
- Regarding security of open source software security experts are divided. Since open source software’s source code is open it is possible to find out loopholes into it and exploit it; at the same time since source code is open, it goes through scrutiny and helps to plug security holes in software.
- Hackers proved time and again that they can exploit security loopholes without having access to source code; so proprietary software is equally vulnerable. At-least security loopholes in open source software are identified and are transparent to its users.
My Takeaway:
- Every organisation should ensure that intellectual property rights of any work carried out by contractor’s/freelancers remains property of the organisation. It is worth revisiting contracts/agreements to check for IP clause.
- It is safe to use open source software at your organisation. It is unlikely that anyone would be sued for copyright infringement.
Whilst seminar was focused on copyright; I was hoping that presenter would cover more debated and complicated issues of Patents. In last few years patent wars broke out between all technology companies (Oracle, Google, Microsoft, SAP, Apple, Motorola, Nokia).
Copyright laws protect manifestation instead of Idea; so it is very easy to conclude who owns copyright. Patents protect Idea instead of its manifestation so it is increasingly difficult to develop anything without infringing on someone’s patent. Since ideas are available ten a penny, most companies patent their ideas and create virtual monopoly on their idea. There were recent cases where companies sued users of competing technology to show their muscle. Mostly technology companies have reserves to protect themselves & their customers; how do open source community protect themselves or their users in such cases?
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