Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law

Public Source

Many companies are willing to go much farther than Microsoft, allowing their source code to be used for more than just examination and interfacing. Licensees can make copies, create derivative works, and distribute their works.

They draw the line, though, at commercial uses of the resulting software. They argue that the free use of open source software for commercial purposes exacerbates the free-rider problem I described in Chapter 10. It reduces the incentives for contributors because profits from the software will go to large companies rather than to contributors. While not always prohibiting commercial uses, as the Microsoft Shared Source license does, public source licenses typically require the payment of royalties for commercial ...