July 2005
Intermediate to advanced
236 pages
7h 2m
English
Content preview from Open Source for the EnterpriseBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 8. A Comparison of Open Source Licenses
This chapter covers the legal underpinnings of open source software as embodied in the licenses created to protect and extend the aims of the software’s creators. From the foundation provided by the GPL that Richard Stallman created for his GNU project, which governs the use and distribution of Linux today, to its predecessors developed by MIT and UC Berkeley, open source licenses have since evolved into more than 50 “flavors” administrated by universities, individuals, and increasingly, corporations including IBM, Apple, and Sun.
How much time an IT department must spend worrying about licenses depends on how open source will be used. For most CIOs and CTOs, who are interested in using open source software only to meet their day-to-day needs, there is little to be concerned about. This group will benefit from this chapter’s explanations of licenses as they related to the SCO case, which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 9, as well as discussions of other software debates and policy issues.
For companies that are developing software that includes open source as components, it is critical to understand the aims and restrictions of these licenses. Even upper management should study the principles involved. One license might require sharing any new code created with the open source community, and another might mean handing over that code to a software giant’s private developers. The current generation of licenses might also prove to ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.