On May 3, 6:25 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Managing the "No Open Source" clause
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Such "No Open Source" clauses are remnants of the (mostly) ignorance
> | of days gone by, but they still persis
> |
> | [...]
This is the actual clause being addressed:
No Open Source Software. The Software provided, or to be provided, by
Company in the manner licensed under this Agreement does not and shall
not contain any software covered by a GNU license or other ?open
source? license or other software license which could compromise or
interfere in any way with the Licensee?s property rights in or to
materials that may come into contact with such software or require the
Licensee to disclose any software or code created by the Licensee
using or in connection with the Software.
Note that the language is very specific in that the language in
question states that this particular product or module does not
contain software only available under "forced disclosure" terms. For
example, the code may include BSD licensed code, or other
more flexible code. It might even call LGPL shared libraries. The
main thing is that
if you use these tools, call these libraries, and use as directed, you
won't be forced to
disclose all of the code that you may have paid consultants,
employees, or contractors to write as "work for hire".
The language is very specific in terms of what is excluded. The main
thing is that it
provides "plausible deniability" for the recipient of the code. If
one of the developers did
happen to copy/paste GPL code into this library or executable, then he
would be personally liable, and probably criminally liable, for
copyright violation.
The irony is that many of these contracts do not indemnify against
copyrighted code
owned and licensed by other corporate providers with a history of
aggressive copyright
enforcement, such as SCO or Microsoft.
There are at least 30 "GPL compatible" OSS licenses, and about 50
licenses listed in
the "OpenSource.org" website ( http://www.opensource.org/ ). This
organization owns
the trademark OpenSource and "Open Source", and has the authority to
determine
which licenses qualify to be listed as "Open Source" software. Almost
half of those
licenses do not require full disclosure of all software. In many
cases, proprietary software can call an Open Source shared library
which can call even the most "Hostile" GPL libraries.
These days software architects need some knowledge of copyright law,
and need to work more closely with lawyers to assure that the complex
network of copyright licenses and components created or distributed
under these licenses are properly and legally combined.
> | Such clauses are a nuisance, but not a debilitating one. I imagine
> | that they'll slowly go the way of the dodo as open source becomes
> | the standard way of doing business. It will take time, but the
> | legal goofiness will go away in advance of open source's triumph.
> `----
In the server environment, we are already seeing careful management of
licenses.
Even within a single product, you may see GPL software, LGPL software,
BSD software,
Proprietary software, and custom developed software, all combined into
an executable that calls other shared libraries, plug-ins, and
services to create what appears to be a single application.
> http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/05/managing_th...
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