How much do open source license terms matter?

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You didn't go far enough in the change...: With legacy Microsoft-style EULA's, the people/organizations that are most likely to infringe the licenses are "End Users". This does not extend to FLOSS, where the people/organizations that are most likely to infringe the license are competing software vendors.

This flips on its head the whole issue of copyright infringement and who software authors have to trust and who they might be forced to sue. It also changes the dynamic of how many people they have to worry about (FLOSS is a tiny number of competing projects/vendors, Microsoft is nearly everyone), and thus how expensive the monitoring and/or litigation will be.

For the average "end user" of FLOSS software, all they care about is that they don't have to obtain additional permission or make additional licensing-related payments in order to use and/or share the software on as many computers as they wish. The licenses authorize what they want to do, and there is really no complexity for them to ever worry about, nor is it really possible for them to infringe the license. All the complex clauses of FLOSS licenses relate to activities that would be carried out by the few software vendors/authors who make and distribute modified versions.

Compare this page http://gpl-violations.org/ to the excessive complexity (and downright invalid statistical methods) from the BSA and their regional spokes-groups.

It also turns out that this turning on its head and simplifying the infringement question is the best solution to the infringement problem that BSA alleges to have.; Posted by: russell@... Posted on: 08/24/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use