[ale] Book Review - Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing

[Barry Hawkins]

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List,
~    I have completed a review for an O'Reilly book as Michael Hirsch had
mentioned back in October 2004[0].  I am posting a copy here for the
group; a version with hyperlinks is available on O'Reilly's catalog page
for the book[1], Amazon[2], or my weblog[3].

[0] - http://www.ale.org/archive/ale/ale-2004-10/msg01066.html
[1] - http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/print/b/1461?x-t=rr.view
[2] -
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596005814/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/102-8868034-4816152?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
[3] -  http://www.yepthatsme.com/

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A Worthwhile Introduction to Open Source Licensing

Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing
Andrew M. St. Laurent
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/osfreesoft/

When sharing with others that I was reviewing an O'Reilly book through
their User Group & Professional Association Program, the first question
was always the same: "What book are you reviewing?" After saying the
title was "Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing",
responses ranged from "What's that?" to "Well, you won't have any
trouble sleeping!" One might think that this list of people included
relatives and coworkers who were not attuned to the open source
community and its issues. On the contrary, the responses came from those
within my circle of acquaintances that include software developers,
system administrators, and even an intellectual property lawyer.
Licensing is not exactly the sort of topic where people slide forward in
their seats and ask to be told more. Such is the appeal of software
licensing; however, the importance of understanding licensing,
particularly within the context of open source development, cannot be
overstated.

Those familiar with the O'Reilly product offerings have no doubt seen or
purchased one or more their Pocket Reference series
(http://pocketrefs.oreilly.com/). They are not comprehensive references,
but rather convenient guides for a specific topic to provide the sort of
information one is not likely to have committed to memory, particularly
as the trend of having cross-disciplined technologists continues. This
book could be considered the analog of pocket guides for open source and
free software licensing. Open source licenses and their legal
interpretation are subject matter that easily warrant a "pocket
reference" that is a full-sized book of nearly 200 pages.

Frankly, reading through a software license and maintaining a reasonable
level of comprehension is a rather tough job. The author manages to make
the task far more bearable and fruitful at the same time; a difficult
balance to strike. The pace of the annotation works well to break up the
various licenses (twelve in total) into bite-sized chunks. Chapters 2
and 3, which address the Apache/BSD/MIT family of licenses and the
GPL/LGPL/MPL family of licenses respectively, each end with a section
titled "Application and Philosophy" that serves as a sort of reward for
making it through the license and establishes a touchstone to summarize
and provide meaningful context for what has been covered.

The annotations of the different licenses are a great introduction, but
the book should not be considered as a complete reference for open
source licensing issues. The book seems to affirm this at points where
the author indicates that particular topics fall outside the book's
scope, even to the point of recommending experienced legal counsel for
certain issues. It also has a wonderful collection of footnotes and
reference to other resources to allow the reader to flesh out topics of
interest beyond the focus of this work.

One subtlety of the book that should not be missed is how the history of
the open source movement is woven throughout the book to provide the
context in which these licenses came into being and were modified to
accommodate the vibrant, emerging world of open development models. The
book's last two chapters bring that context to the foreground, fully
developing the consequence of the licenses in daily development
activity. It is far too easy to view these licenses and as mere legal
documents that exist in and of themselves; the author reminds us that
these licenses are the manifestations of a spirit of selfless
contribution and work toward social good made possible by the
considerable sacrifice of quite gifted individuals. For those passionate
about the open source and free software movements, the section of
chapter 7 titled "Models of Open Source and Free Software Development"
is a poignant and stirring encapsulation of the first years of the GNU
and Linux projects and the work that brought them into being. The clich?
rings true; we do indeed "stand on the shoulders of giants."

The number of editorial errors involving misspelled and/or missing words
seemed relatively high; this is a trend that seems to have developed in
technical books in recent years, to a point that the technical community
has come to accept it as some sort of side effect of the rapid pace with
which books must be produced in order to keep pace with the rate of
change. Given that this is an issue present in other works as well as
this one, it should not particularly count as a mark against the work,
but rather serve to underscore an issue publishers should consider
improving.

"Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing" is a book which
strikes a balance between completeness of subject matter coverage and
manageability of size. Given the amount of attention the average open
source user or developer has given to licensing, reading this book would
be a considerable improvement. This book is recommended for a couple of
audiences. First, it serves as a great foundation for developers either
active in or contemplating participation in open source development.
Searching most any open source mailing list for the term "license" can
usually turn up some of its hottest flame wars. If most developers had
this introductory level of understanding about the main open source
licenses, hundreds of message threads arguing about licensing could be
avoided.

A second audience for this book is the project manager and/or CTO in
most corporate IT shops. Most corporate projects are making use of
numerous open source libraries and frameworks. This is particularly true
with J2EE, but also with .Net as a number of .Net counterparts to
popular J2EE resources arise, e.g. NAnt, NUnit, etc. This book can
dispel unnecessary apprehension regarding the use of these libraries
that often arises from fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) propagated in
much of the mainstream technology media. It can also equip managers to
make informed decisions about team members' potential contributions to
open source projects and the potential legal implications.
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Regards,
- --
Barry Hawkins
All Things Computed
site: www.alltc.com
weblog: www.yepthatsme.com

Registered Linux User #368650
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