Business Success with Open Source

Chapter 3Licenses: The Rules of IP Engagement

As you learned in Chapter 2, ​Make the Intangible Profitable with Intellectual Property​, for the most part copyright is something that Just Happens whenever an idea is expressed in a fixed form. It’s automatic the moment a work is fixed, with no further action generally necessary. Giving permission for any sort of use of the work, however, must be intentional and deliberate. A copyright holder must take explicit action to confirm that, yes, these types of actions are permitted on the work under those types of conditions. That action is known as a license.

This chapter introduces you to the concept of licensing and the different types of software and FOSS licenses that exist in the ecosystem, but ...