Linuxmafia.com Knowledgebase
Top: Licensing_and_Law
- Abstraction,
Filtration, Comparison - Key court decision (Computer
Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., FN53: 982 F.2d
693, 23 USPQ2d 1241 2d Cir. 1992), in which the Second
Circuit developed the now-standard abstraction, filtration,
comparison test to determine if a software work is derivative
of a prior one, i.e., shares copyrightable elements. This was
later further detailed in Gates Rubber v. Bando Chemical,
FN57: 9 F.3d 823, 28 USPQ2d 1503 10th Cir. 1993
- Academic
Free License - Larry Rosen's Academic Free Licence (AFL)
is roughly similar to the MIT/X licence but adds
patent-termination and excludes trademark rights, and
promoting Rosen's view that open-source licences should be
grounded in contract law (unlike most, including GPL)
-
All Rights Reserved - Why the phrase 'All Rights
Reserved' no longer has meaning except in a few cases, and
what those cases are
- Australian
Issues - Legal Issues Relating to Free and Open Source
Software, by Brian Fitzgerald and Graham Bassett, describing
open source and its licensing in considerable detail, and
describing relevant legal issues and problems under
Australian law
- Affero GPL
- Authorised variant of the GPL that attempts to impose a
copyleft obligation on uses of the work that don't entail
distribution (e.g., Web services)
-
Bootlegging Policy - Software bootlegging policy and its
rationale at an unnamed Linux firm
-
Caldera Antitrust - Details of Caldera antitrust lawsuit
against Microsoft Corp.
-
Caldera/SCO 2003-07-21 - Caldera/SCO conference call
transcript, 2003-07-21
- Compilation
Copyright - US Supreme Court 'Feist' decision, which put
a lower bound on the minimal amount of creativity required to
claim a compilation copyright, i.e., just arranging telephone
white-pages entries alphabetically isn't enough
-
Contract Elements - Required elements of common-law
contract
- Copyleft
Documentation - Michael Stutz's article on how and why
the GNU GPL (nominally a software licence) can be suitable
for non-software works such as writings)
-
Copyright Infringement - Detailed example and analysis of
what really happens in the business world when software
copyright infringement has occurred, debunking assertions of
infringer being 'forced' by copyleft licensing to release
infringing source code
-
Copyright Infringement - Good rundown of the law of
copyright infringement/derivative works in software: covers
literal vs. non-literal copying, literal vs. non-literal
elements (and the abstraction, filtration, comparison test
applied to copying of the latter, developed in Computer
Associates v. Altai), and expressions embodying methods vs.
creative expressions, with reference to leading cases Lotus
v. Borland and Apple v. Microsoft
- Creative
Commons Licences - The Creative Commons group's spectrum
of licences for non-software creative works
-
Crypto Export Regs - USA cryptography export
laws/regulations explained
-
Derivative Works - Key legal decision (Micro Star v.
FormGen, Inc., 154 F.3d 1107 9th Cir. 1998), illustrating
that one computer program may be ruled derivative of another
even if they have never had a single line of code in common;
court found that the infringing work had incorporated
audiovideo display data, a protected creative work, from the
original, thereby incorporating the 'story' (not the story
idea, but its various expressive elements) of the original
game
- Disclaimers
- Why automatically-appended e-mail disclaimers are useless,
in addition to making your firm look stupid in public
- Cyberspace Law
Course - EFF on-line course in computer and software law,
with emphasis on the Internet
-
FAT Patents - Expiration dates of Microsoft Corp. patents
affecting long filenames on File Allocation Table
filesystems
- DFSG FAQ -
Frequently Asked Questions document about application of the
Debian Free Software Guidelines (unofficial draft), by Barak
A. Perlmutter
-
First Sale - Why the First Sale Doctrine doesn't apply to
digital works
- Fear
of Forking - Essay on why forking of open-source projects
is harmless and actually beneficial (with examples)
- FSF Licence
Analysis - FSF commentary on other groups' free-software
licences
- FSF Licence
Taxonomy - FSF's clarification of licence categories,
both free and proprietary
- G4L -
Case study of copyright infringement: Ghost for Linux GPLed
utility by anonymous former maintainer 'nme' ('Andreas')
appears to illegally copy Hubert Feyrer's old-BSD-licensed
g4u ('Ghost for Unix'). (It's unclear whether the successor
'freeware' utility by successor maintainer 'Frank Stephen'
frastep@users.sourceforge.net / fra_step@yahoo.com also
infringes.)
-
G4L Licensing - Legal analysis of the G4L copyright
infringement incident
-
GNU FDL Problems - Debian developers' analyses of
problems in the GNU Free Documentation License (aka 'GFDL',
and known in its earliest draft as the Document General
Public License or 'DGPL')
- GNU FDL
Why Not - Article 'Why You Shouldn't Use the GNU FDL', by
Nathanael Nerode
- GPL
FAQ Comments - Analysis of the FSF's GPL FAQ
- GPL Not a
Contract - Article: Enforcing the GPL by Prof. Eben
Moglen, making the point (among others) that GPLv2 and
similar licenses work through copyright law, not contract
law
- GPL
Not a Contract - Additional copy of Prof. Moglen's piece,
at his own site
- GPL Not a
Contract - Follow-up article seconding Eben Moglen's,
written by Pamela Jones of Groklaw
- GPLv1
- Text of the historic GNU General Public License v. 1
-
GPLv3 Plans - Probable direction of development for the
unreleased GPLv3
- GPL
Violations - Site that tracks and documents instances of
GPL-relavant copyright violations and their resolutions
- Ius Mentis - Site
operated by Dutch patent attorney Arnoud Engelfriet to
explain patents, copyrights, and other 'intellectual
property' law to techies
- Just
Like A Book - Prototype benevolent-proprietary 'Just Like
a Book' licence, such as was famously used in early Borland
products
-
LDP Copying License - LDP Copying License of 6 January
1997, an early version of the default licence for Linux
Documentation Project submissions, written by Matt Welsh.
Formerly posted at http://www.tldp.org/COPYRIGHT.html and
equivalent URLs. This is a proprietary licence, permitting
verbatim copying without modification.
-
LDP Copying License - LDP Copying License of 16 September
1999, reachable at http://www.tldp.org/copyright.html and
http://www.tldp.org/LDP-COPYRIGHT.html. It is presently
unknown whether any LDP documents use or used it. This is a
proprietary licence, permitting verbatim copying without
modification.
-
LDP License v2.0 - LDP License v2.0 of 12 January 1998,
the default licence for Linux Documentation Project
submissions, written by Greg Hankins and others, and redacted
by Guylhem Aznar. Used by many HOWTOs and FAQs, and in
general nature a liberal copyleft licence. Posted at
http://www.tldp.org/COPYRIGHT.html and equivalent URLs.
-
LDP Licence post-2.0 draft - Suggested modest revision to
LDP License 2.0
- Libranet
Licensing - Libranet founders clarify that Libranet ISOs
are lawfully redistributable
- Licence
Quick Reference - Bryce 'Zooko' Wilcox's Quick Reference
For Choosing a Free Software License
-
Licensing Discussion - Article about a panel discussion
on licensing during LinuxWorld Conference and Exposition, by
Rick Moen
- Licensing
HOWTO - Legal analysis of open-source licensing by Eric
S. Raymond and Cathy Raymond (copyright attorney)
-
LSA Clearinghouse - Mirror of Piotr F. Mitros's 1998 FAQ
about the Linux Standards Association trademark
controversy
-
LZW Patents - Status of Unisys's remaining LZW
compression algorithm patents, internationally
- Microsoft
EULAs - Archive of Microsoft End User Licence
Agreements
- MPL
Usage - Guidelines for applying the Mozilla Public
License to software
- MPL/GPL
Incompatibilities - Concise analysis of the points on
which MPL and GPL clash in derivative works using both
licences (although the author uses some misleading terms such
as 'relicensing').
- NDA
Addendum - Rick Moen's suggested addendum to add to any
NDA suddenly sprung on you. (Feel free to adapt to
suit.)
-
Open Content - David Wiley's 1998 documentation licences:
OpenContent License 1.0 ('OPL' -- short for its initial name
'OpenContent Principles and License'), which was a simplified
version of FSF's DGPL, and its successor Open Publication
License 1.0. Wiley now deprecates both of these, and
recommends instead that people use Creative Commons licences
(having joined that project in 2003 as Director of
Educational Licenses, and shut down Open Content).
- Open
Software License 2.0 - Larry Rosen's Open Software
License 2.0 (OSL) is an open-source licence with
patent-termination provisions and an attempt to impose a
copyleft provision on uses that don't entail software
distribution, and promoting Rosen's view that open-source
licences should be grounded in contract law (unlike most,
including GPL)
- Open Software
License 1.0 - Earlier draft of OSL, now replaced with the
2.0 text.
- Open Source
License Law Resource Center - Dennis Kennedy's resources
on legal issues affecting open source
-
OSS: Opportunity or Threat? - Open source licenses from a
(patent) lawyer's viewpoint. Many links to general copyright
/ licensing information
- OSI
Administrative Criteria - OSI's administrative criteria
for licences proposed for OSD-compliance certification. (Must
not be duplicative, must be clear, must be reusable.)
Criteria are applied along with the OSD yardstick, itself.
(Slightly revised text as approved by the OSI Board is
pending.)
- Patent
Terms - Patent attorney explains for Groklaw readers the
complex rules for duration of USA patents
-
Public Domain - Why 'public domain' is a doubtful and
problematic licence category
- RHEL
ISOs - Duplication of Red Hat Enterprise Linux ISOs and
contract, trademark, and copyright concerns
- SCO v. IBM info -
The zIweThey SCO v. IBM info wiki, for information about the
SCO lawsuit
-
SUSE Product Strategy - Taxonomy of SUSE Linux AG's
numerous product bundles, and their copyright
encumbrances
- TeX
Licensing - Post that attempts to clarify the
much-debated question of whether Donald Knuth's TeX is open
source
-
Trademark Law - Explanation of trademark law for
open-source software users
-
Trademark Threat Response - Excellent Fenwick and
West-drafted letter debunking a trademark threat, that covers
all common points with great clarity
-
Trademark Patent Letter - Beautiful example of a response
to a trademark/patent threat letter, by Kurt Denke in
response to a threat by Monster Cable, Inc.
-
Unauthorised Practice of Law - Summary of an Ohio
administrative legal case that clarifies the factor that
distinguishes illegal legal advice from lawful general
information on legal matters: tailoring of advice to the
needs of a specific person
-
USL v. BSD and UC Regents - US District Court judge's
1993 preliminary ruling denying preliminary injunction to
AT&T against BSD on grounds that AT&T had probably
destroyed its own copyright under the Publication Doctrine,
and that the binary interfaces in question cannot be trade
secrets because they're purely functional and required for
compatibility (mirror of cm.bell-labs.com)
-
Windows Look-Alikes - Legal analysis of claims that
Windows-resembling environments such as xpde might violate
Microsoft Corp. copyrights: Useful for understanding other
look-and-feel issues, as well
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