Open Source for Business: A Practical Guide to Open Source Software Licensing

by Heather Meeker

Heather Meeker's Open Source for Business is a practical, readable guide to help businesspeople, engineers, and lawyers understand open source software licensing. Based on the author's twenty years as an attorney working at the crossroads of intellectual property and technology, this guide explains the legal and technical principles behind open source licensing so you can make the right decisions for your business. It offers tips on using open source, contributing to open source projects, and releasing your own open source software. You'll also find quick-reference tables on the major open source licenses, plus forms and checklists you can use to promote compliance. In this book, you will learn . . . • Why open source is not a "virus" • What the GPL is and how to handle it • When and how to conduct open source audits • What a user-friendly open source policy looks like • How to avoid and respond to open source enforcement claims • How to use open source to fight patent infringement claims • How to manage trademarks for open source products

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Law, Reference

329 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2015

Reviews

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the introduction to open source licensing that I've been looking for! Most resources I've previously come across have been too shallow for my purposes (with no clear further reading apart from "read the licenses"), written by non-lawyers with an axe to grind, or written for people with (apparently) decades of experience in software licensing, based on their heavy use of undefined jargon and unspoken assumptions about the reader's experience.

This book, on the other hand, introduces the underlying "black letter" law that open source licensing is built on (mostly copyright and contracts) and gives a crash course on software (computer architecture, how source code is compiled into object code, how object code is linked to generate an executable, etc.). No jargon is used without being defined. Wonderful.

In addition, this book was written by an experienced lawyer, so:
- it's not full of "IANAL" hedges;
- it analyzes legal risks as a lawyer would, rather than as a software engineer would;
- it provides citations to and summaries of major decisions in the field, so we can actually point to caselaw; and
- it provides practical guidance about what to expect through processes like open source due diligence analyses and what sorts of things might typically be done at companies running into open source issues.

I'm so glad I finally found that missing primer on open source licensing.

[Rich Gibbons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Gives a great overview of the open source landscape and a useful, a d interesting, look at various legal aspects of open source licensing.

Very well written - not too complex, great lists of resources, and easy to read.

Definitely recommend!

[César · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todo lo que necesitas saber sobre licenciamiento de software libre y de código abierto. El público objetivo es más del mundo legal, pero no me pareció un gran problema.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a lifelong software engineer, I read this book to get a basic understanding of various open source software licenses which are used in modern software. After finishing the book I realized that it
presumed a deep legal background which I did not have and was not interested in acquiring.
I have worked with several large open source software projects. I can easily understand the
software (Open Stack, Docker, Kubernetes, etc.), but I did not get an understanding of open source licenses from this book. Ms. Meeker must be a very intelligent person.

I came away from reading the book with the conclusion that the law behind common opensource
licenses (GPL, LGPL, MIN, Eclipse, etc.) is more complex than the engineering understanding
needed to understand the open source licenses which govern those software projects.

[Armin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very helpful to understand the free and open source licensing landscape better. That said, it also goes into a lot of legal detail, which was more than I was looking for. Therefore this book will be a more a reference for me for the cases that I need it. The majority of the book also seems to be dedicated to copyleft licenses (as opposed to permissive licenses), which lies in the nature of the legal detail. The pseudo-code selection tree for the right license is very helpful.

[Julian Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and comprehensive reference for engineers, lawyers and business people who work with or produce open source.

[Isilda Costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything there is to know about open source is in this book!

[Vitaly Repin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very detailed and professional overview of using FOSS in business context.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot more legalese and case law than I expected. Not so much a practical guide, but more a legal lens to look through.

[Ben Hilburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've now read this book twice. Excellent reference for anyone working in open source.