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Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law
book

Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law

by Lawrence Rosen
July 2004
Intermediate to advanced
432 pages
8h 12m
English
Pearson
Content preview from Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law

Access to Source Code

The GPL allows licensees to copy and distribute the source code:

You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided.... (GPL section 1.)

Source code is defined as follows:

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. (GPL section 3.)

This is a broad definition and its intent is obviously to ensure that usable source code is available for licensed software. Deliberate obfuscation of ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0131487876Purchase book