Floss (Free, Libre, Open Source Software) Licensing: Trends, Exposition and Critique
| Autor | Maureen O’Sullivan |
| Cargo | Lecturer in Law, National University of Ireland, Galway |
| Páginas | 17-29 |
Page 17
FLOSS3, or Free/Libre1/Open Source software is an all-inclusive term, intended to describe non-proprietary software which may be licensed under a variety of different conditions. It was first coined by Rishab Ghosh of UNU-MERIT (http://www.flossproject.org/), in order to describe in one syllable, free/open source/libre software. The distinction between these different terms for essentially similar software, is philosophical, rather than technical. “Free software” can be ambiguous in that its name suggests that it is without cost, where the intention is to maximise liberty. The term “open source” began to be used in 1998 by free software advocates, who favoured involving big business in the development process, and who wished to address this confusion. This caused a schism in the free software community, with some members opting for the term “free”, whilst others adopted “open source”. Once the European Commission became interested in the possibilities that this software offered, it started using a new term, “libre” which means free, but not “gratis” in French and Spanish, intending to replace both free and open source. Acronyms such as FOSS2, FLOSS and LOSS4 have since emerged. However, despite this much ado about nomenclature, the real issue has to do withPage 18 licensing, which distinguishes all FLOSS from proprietary software. It also breaks down these philosophical barriers to some extent because, regardless of what philosophical camp one occupies, many licences enjoy common approval among free software and open source advocates.
Free software has been around since before copyright coverage of this technology, which made what was once free, proprietary. Richard Stallman, a talented and idealistic computer programmer, is famed with having started this movement in the 1980s with the founding of the world's first free software charity, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and also with his work on the GNU project, which aimed to create a free operating system. This operating system was named “GNU” - a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix!” - but it lacked a functioning kernel. The advent of the Internet and the ingenuity of the GNU/Linux kernel creator, Linus Torvalds enhanced the growth of free software so that by the late 1990s, many companies became interested in its distribution and commercial possibilities. The most publicized gesture came from Netscape, which released its browser as an open source product in 1998, and this was, and still is, coordinated and managed at Mozilla.org. This involves hundreds of volunteer developers who are able to access the code base of the browser, in return for their contributions. Prior to this release, Netscape's browser had been a proprietary product. Several firms, such as Red Hat, Mandrake (now Mandriva) and Caldera also got involved in packaging Linux with desktop interfaces such as GNOME and KDE, whilst IBM invested substantially in Linux and began supporting the Apache Web browser.
Other significant events around this time included the publication of books about these sociological and historical processes, including Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar and Chris Di Bona et. al.'s Open Sources, which served to disseminate information about FLOSS outside of the immediate community, spawning ongoing and unabated academic, among other, interested parties.
All software, regardless of whether it is proprietary or FLOSS, is protected by copyright law. This protection is automatic once the work is fixed in a tangible medium. Whilst copyright law differs from country to country, there are some de minimus international standards, binding many countries, which set the scope and length of copyright coverage. Since the 1980s, software has been protected as a literary work in the copyright law of many jurisdictions, and the current average span of copyright is the life of the author plus 70 years.
Copyright does not protect the entire work: it protects original expression, but not the underlying ideas. This distinction is not always entirely clear, and issues might be decided on a case-by-case basis. There are some cases in which authors renounce their copyright, an example being the World Wide Web software whose creator, Tim Berners-Lee, released it into the public domain. He wanted this software to be available without any restrictions and, instead of profiting directly from his creation –Page 19 a frequently cited justification for copyright - he gained significant reputational capital.
However, both proprietary software and FLOSS rely on copyright, which binds third parties, and then utilize licenses, a form of contract, to grant certain rights to those wishing to use the copyrighted works. Contracts only bind parties to the contract, so if A produces a piece of software and grant a license to B, B is bound by the terms. If at a later point, B then passes the software onto C, minus the license and in violation of its terms, A cannot sue C on the contract, but can sue C for a violation of copyright law. This is not entirely unproblematic, however: as we have seen, each country has its own copyright law, although the international trend is towards increased harmonization among different countries. Whilst proprietary software licenses are routinely violated, because there is an economic gain in doing so, this tends not to be the case where FLOSS licenses are concerned and monitoring of compliance tends to take place within the community.
Proprietary licenses tend to be quite restrictive of users' freedom, although terms will vary according to the product. The typical proprietary software license is the one attaching to Microsoft's products, which shan't be reproduced here, as it is copyrighted. It can be viewed online at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/eula.mspx. Proprietary software licenses can also be used to cover software such as shareware (software, which is provided free of cost for a certain period of time, beyond which, end users must pay) or freeware (software provided to end users, at no cost). An example of the latter is the Adobe Acrobat reader for which users are not obliged to pay but copying and modifications are not permitted. Access to the source code is not granted under proprietary licensing schemes.
FLOSS licenses allow users a varying degree of rights, not normally granted under copyright law. Such rights will be examined in greater detail later. They include permissions such as the right to access the source code, the right to redistribute programs, and the right to make modifications. Some licenses permit proprietary addons whereas others specifically prohibit this. Whilst this may have been a matter which only principally affected software developers at the beginning of the free software movement, these freedoms have assumed a greater degree of importance since governments have become involved in FLOSS use and production. This is because questions of accountability for the use of taxpayers' money looms large and models may emerge where governments boost their economies by employing teams to manage FLOSS development and train the population in its use. Before such involvement, usage was largely restricted to software developer communities as free software has had a disadvantage of not being particularly user-friendly.
The country most advanced in this type of integrative/educational model is Spain, where its Western province of Extremadura now has one computer, running Linux, for every two students, in all their secondary schools (Sterling, 2003). Their license of choice is the GNU GPL, as it encourages and enables further development of the programs, whereas licenses which allow proprietary add-ons would tend to enrich thePage 20 private IT sector rather than the public in general. This scheme is now being implemented in other areas of Spain, such as Andalucia and overseas, in countries such as Colombia and Malaysia.
Free software is copyrighted, non-proprietary software which allows users to run, redistribute, and modify the software without putting subsequent restrictions on its...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃO