Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing

Organization

This book starts with the basics of contracts and licensing, proceeds through the details of the licenses, and concludes with a discussion of the implications of these licenses for organizations and for projects. You don't need to read the book from start to finish, and it's quite reasonable in some cases to read only the parts that apply to the licenses that interest you. This book has seven chapters:

Chapter 1, Open Source Licensing, Contract, and Copyright Law

This chapter takes a look at the traditional foundations below open source licensing, including contracts and copyrights, with a brief look at patents and warranties.

Chapter 2, The MIT, BSD, Apache, and Academic Free Licenses

This chapter takes a close look at licenses that specify terms, which allow the redistribution of source code but place few limits on its commercial use.

Chapter 3, The GPL, LGPL, and Mozilla Licenses

These licenses specify terms that are designed to keep source code and derivations of that code openly available for further community development.

Chapter 4, Qt, Artistic, and Creative Commons Licenses

This chapter looks at some licenses that take their own paths, reserving rights to the creator of a project, and, in the case of Creative Commons, licensing content that isn't necessarily code.

Chapter 5, Non-Open Source Licenses

While free and open source licenses are the focus of this book, understanding proprietary licenses can also be important, especially as companies like Sun and Microsoft work ...