Where do you stand? Open Source, Open Content, Free- and Shareware

What software licenses are available and how do they effect your rights regarding implementation, modification and distribution of software. We have collected some interesting information regarding these very important topics.

 

GNU General Public License (GPL)

DThe GNU general public license (GPL) was developed by the free software foundation which includes the copyleft clause for licensing open source software. Nearly all open source applications are licensed under this model including Linux, moodle and even Typo3. The most important aspects covered in the GNU are user rights with regard to modification, duplication and distribution of open source software. This also applies to the commercial use of open source software.


The copyleft clause ensures that future developments are likewise automatically placed under the general public license. This means that developers who extend the functionality of the software are not able to incorporate them under a new corporate license and all published development must remain free of charge. The general public license has contributed to the development of high quality software applications through voluntarily communities who further develop the applications.

 

GNU General Public License (GPL)



Freeware

The term freeware refers to software that has been made available for use free of charge by the author. Freeware is usually more proprietary i.e. commercial and should not be confused with free software. Free software makes demands on software licence rights and grants to the user certain liberties.


The software author has the liberty to use, duplicate and distribute his software. Freeware usually permits use of software free of charge, all other rights remain with the author. Users are not allowed to further distribute the software just because its freeware.

See Wikipedia



Shareware - Restricted use of software

Shareware is usually made available free of charge for a certain time period, after which it must be purchased. There are different kinds of shareware. They are normally partially free versions, which do not include all the functionality of the full version. Through the registration process, either a full version is made available to the user or the extra features are activated by entering a full version license key.

 

Other shareware repeatedly asks the user to upgrade to the full version. The third kind of shareware that is very common is a full version, whereby the author trusts the user to purchase the software after the trial period eypires, which is not the most successful option.

 

See Wikipedia



Creative Commons - Flexible texts, audio and video licenses

The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share. The organization has released several copyright licenses known as creative commons licenses. These licenses, depending on the one chosen, restrict only certain rights (or none) of the work.

 

The Creative Commons licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.


The project provides several free licenses that copyright owners can use when releasing their works on the Web. It also provides RDF/XML metadata that describes the license and the work, making it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works. Creative Commons also provides a "Founders' Copyright" contract, intended to re-create the effects of the original U.S. Copyright created by the founders of the U.S. Constitution.


All these efforts, and more, are done to counter the effects of what Creative Commons considers to be a dominant and increasingly restrictive permission culture. In the words of Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons and former Chairman of the Board, it is "a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past". Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain and strengthen their monopolies on cultural products such as popular music and popular cinema, and that Creative Commons can provide alternatives to these restrictions.

 

http://creativecommons.org/

 

Open ACCESS – immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital scholarly material

The first major international statement on open access was the Budapest open access initiative. This provided the definition of open access, and has a growing list of signatories. Two further statements followed: the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing from June 2003 and the Berlin declaration on open access to knowledge in the sciences and humanities in October 2003.

 

Berlin Declaration