Open-source license
Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition.
After 1980, the United States began to treat software as a literary work covered by copyright law. Richard Stallman founded the free software movement in response to the rise of proprietary software. The term "open source" was used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), founded by free software developers Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond. "Open source" emphasizes the strengths of the open development model rather than software freedoms. While the goals behind the terms are different, open-source licenses and free software licenses describe the same thing.
The two main categories of open-source licenses are permissive and copyleft. Permissive licenses come from academia. They grant permission to modify and distribute software. They usually require attribution, and they disclaim warranties. Copyleft licenses come from the free software movement. They require derivative works to be distributed with the source code and under a similar license. Since the mid-2000s, courts in multiple countries have upheld the terms of both types of license. Software developers have filed cases both as copyright infringement and as breaches of contract.
Limitations[edit]
One limitation of open-source licensing, exacerbated by cloud computing, is that a developer cannot prevent another business from commercializing the software.[90] With cloud computing, a vendor hosts the software, and their end users do not have to download, access, or even know about the code in use.[91] Since 2010, the cloud model has grown in prominence. Commercial vendors of hosted software have profited from open-source code bases, with some contributing back open-source code and others contributing nearly nothing. Because the cloud software is hosted rather than distributed, some copyleft licenses will not be triggered.[92] Some free software developers affected by this have used the AGPL, a copyleft license written for hosted software.[93] Others have shifted to using proprietary licenses with some features of open-source licensing.[94] For example, source-available software is a proprietary model, where software comes with source code as a reference.[95]
Another limitation inherent in open-source licenses is the potential for trademark overlap. Copyrights and patents are made freely available, but trademarks are not.[96] Trademarks for open-source software work the same as those for proprietary software.[97] Trademark restrictions can overlap copyrights and affect material otherwise freely available.[98] The US Supreme Court described using trademark law to restrict public domain content as "mutant copyright".[99] In Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., the court "caution[ed] against misuse or over-extension of trademark" law without providing a firm decision on those mutant copyrights.[100][101] Trademark overlap can leave open-source and free content projects vulnerable to a "hostile takeover" if outside parties file for trademarks on derivative works.[102] Notably, Andrey Duskin applied for trademarks on the SCP Foundation, a collaborative writing project, when creating derivative works based on SCP stories.[103]