Proprietary software

“ Due to their closed and restrictive nature, proprietary software licensing schemes should probably be avoided whenever possible. As with other restrictive license models, the administrative burden of managing compliance and collecting revenues can be significant. For this reason, if anticipated total revenues are not high, it can often be more beneficial for scientists to take advantage of the reputational benefits and increased influence that come with the wide adoption and dissemination open licensing models encourage. ”

“ Institutions receiving public funds will typically license proprietary software to other academic or non-profit users at no charge but require a fee for licensing to for-profit and industry users.
Applying a License to Your Software
Once you have chosen a license strategy for your software, the usual first step in applying it is to contact your institutional TTO. Although many FOSS licenses are easy to apply even by the non-legal-expert, as researchers and academics it is unlikely you personally own all of the rights to your work. ”

“ Sure, PCs were more powerful, but in commoditizing the PC marketplace with its chips, Intel had created a situation in which proprietary software vendors now held the power. For every new user won over to the free software cause via Linux, hundreds, perhaps thousands, were booting up Microsoft Windows for the first time. ”

“ Selling software is just as risky, if not more risky, than buying software, they say. Without the legal guarantees provided by private software licenses, not to mention the economic prospects of a privately owned "killer app" (i.e., a breakthrough technology that launches an entirely new market) ,Killer apps don't have to be proprietary. Witness, of course, the legendary Mosaic browser, a program whose copyright permits noncommercial derivatives with certain restrictions. Still, I think the reader gets the point: the software marketplace is like the lottery. ”

“ Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. ”

“ It would mean assessing the impact of rules on both proprietary and nonproprietary production. For example, if the introduction of a broad regime of software patents would render open source software development more difficult (because individual contributors cannot afford to do a patent search on every piece of code they contribute) , then this should be reflected as a cost of software patents, to be balanced against whatever benefits the system brought. A method for encouraging innovation might, in fact, inhibit one form of it. ”

“ While manufacturers argue that these measures are necessary to protect proprietary hardware and copyrighted technologies, repair advocates argue such tactics lock ISOs and consumers out of basic repairs. Embedded software may force consumers to have the maintenance and repair of their products performed by the manufacturers’ authorized service networks. ”

“ There is, in short, an inverse relationship between allowing the exercise of proprietary control over software works and the growth of a freely reusable commons of such works. The GPL, LGPL, and BSD licenses mark several of the possible points along a continuum at which the tradeoff between those two objectives might be effectuated. If FOSS licenses are subject to the Copyright Act’s termination provisions, however, all of those tradeoffs become conditional, contingent, and uncertain. ”

“ Permissive licenses may be preferred due to their ease of application and universal downstream compatibility. Copyleft licenses may be useful in accommodating upstream encumbered code or preferred by researchers seeking to assure perpetual open access, but their reciprocity requirements can limit downstream options. Hybrid licensing schemes, due to their added complexity, are more limited in their utility, but if appropriate, can offer many of the benefits of both proprietary and open source models. ”

“ Proprietary licenses can incorporate upstream permissively licensed code, but by definition are incompatible with any other downstream license. Grey represents actions that are not permitted without negotiating a separate license agreement with the rights owner. Directionality is an important reason why, if you're trying to integrate code written by others with your own, you'll want to be aware of what license the code you are incorporating carries. When attempting to combine code from multiple projects each under different license types, issues of compatibility can become very complex. ”

“ In order to monopolize across an open commons you have to be very rich, very big, very deep, and have a long time scale. If you do, then you can take everything that is put into the open commons, pull it out, put it in your proprietary products, and compete against the commons advantageously. For years, we expected Microsoft to begin to do that. ”

“ LEARNING FROM THE SHARING ECONOMY 50
Accept for the sake of argument that the free software community actually works, actually produces high-quality products capable of competing in the market with proprietary alternatives. Concede for a moment that the adoption of Creative Commons licenses shows there are millions of creators out there who want to share their works with others. Many of those creators even want to allow the world to build on their material. ”

“ The same group of licenses might also be evaluated not for how they affect individual users, but for how they affect the commons. BSD-style licenses are essentially agnostic on the question of growing the commons. Developers may add software to the pool, but anyone else is free to incorporate the licensed content into a proprietary product and need not make their own contributions available for others to reuse. ”

“ Governance processes, too, can be assembled through distributed methods on a global network, by people with widely varying motivations, skills, and reserve prices.5 24
The free and open source software movements have produced software that rivals or, some claim, exceeds the capabilities of conventional proprietary, binary-only software.6 Its adoption on the "enterprise level" is impressive, as is the number and enthusiasm of the various technical testaments to its strengths. You have almost certainly used open source software or been its beneficiary. ”

“ The difference between protecting a program under copyright and protecting a program under software patents is subtle but significant. In the case of copyright, a software creator can restrict duplication of the source code but not duplication of the idea or functionality that the source code addresses. In other words, if a developer chooses not to use a software program under the original developer's terms, that second developer is still free to reverse-engineer the program—i.e., duplicate the software program's functionality by rewriting the source code from scratch. ”

“ According to the U.S. Patent Office, companies and individuals may secure patents for innovative algorithms provided they submit their claims to a public review. In theory, this allows the patent-holder to trade off disclosure of their invention for a limited monopoly of a minimum of 20 years after the patent filing. In practice, the disclosure is of limited value, since the operation of the program is often self-evident. Unlike copyright, a patent gives its holder the ability to head off the independent development of software programs with the same or similar functionality. ”

“ For most companies, however, software patents have become a defensive tool, with cross-licensing deals balancing one set of corporate patents against another in a tense form of corporate detente. Still, in a few notable cases of computer encryption and graphic imaging algorithms, software vendors have successfully stifled rival technologies. ”

“ A fundamental goal of FOSS is to promote the free exchange of ideas and technology without fear of infringing the rights of others. Ideally, code licensed under like-minded FOSS terms should be freely combinable to create new products. Compatibility is the attribute of software licenses that allows combining of program code. To be compatible, license terms must be free of contradictory or mutually exclusive requirements. ”

“ Instead of viewing this community as a threat, high-tech companies like IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Sun Microsystems have come to rely upon it, selling software applications and services built to ride atop the ever-growing free software infrastructure. ”

“ Bear in mind that the computer store isn’t going to make a profit off a free program. Some organizations, however, are selling MODEM7 at next to nothing through the mail. For instance, the Public Domain Software Copying Company says it has versions for the IBM PC and clones, all the Kaypro machines, the Morrow micros and Osborne, among others. ”

“ The success of GNU/Linux has led to a larger free software movement as well as the “open source” movement, which releases software and its source code under copyright licenses that provide some of the software freedoms. ”

“ Microsoft sells Windows to end users and computer manufacturers, both foreign and domestic. Purchasing manufacturers install the software onto the computers they sell. Microsoft sends to each of the foreign manufacturers a master version of Windows, either on a disk or via encrypted electronic transmission. The manufacturer uses the master version to generate copies. Those copies, not the master sent by Microsoft, are installed on the foreign manufacturer's computers. Once assembly is complete, the foreign-made computers are sold to users abroad. ”

“ Even powerful vendors such as Microsoft rely on the support of third-party software developers whose tools, programs, and computer games make an underlying software platform such as Windows more attractive to the mainstream consumer. ”

“ Companies such as Apple Computer and Commodore were minting fresh millionaires selling machines with built-in operating systems. Unaware of the hacker culture and its distaste for binary-only software, many of these users saw little need to protest when these companies failed to attach the accompanying source-code files. A few anarchic adherents of the hacker ethic helped propel that ethic into this new marketplace, but for the most part, the marketplace rewarded the programmers speedy enough to write new programs and savvy enough to copyright them as legally protected works. ”

“ Those software commons and closures are also governed, at least to some extent, by a law of patent about software, most of it generated in the United States between 1990 and 2008, and now perhaps also beginning to die, but a very serious complication, adding many Ptolemaic epicycles and many opportunities for politics for those of us who actually do this law as a technical subject. ”

“ By strengthening the commons-defeating features of copyright’s statutory defaults, the Copyright Act’s termination provisions may pose particular risks to the growth of a software commons.
C. Open-Content Licensing: Non-Software Works Nothing in the logic of FOSS licensing necessarily confines the creation of an open-content commons to the realm of software, and a number of projects have sought to extend the creative dynamism of the FOSS movement to other productive domains. ”

“ Riding atop this microprocessor wave were hundreds-thousands-of commercial software programs, each protected by a patchwork of user licenses and nondisclosure agreements that made it impossible for hackers to review or share source code. The licenses were crude and ill-fitting, but by 1983 they had become strong enough to satisfy the courts and scare away would-be interlopers. Software, once a form of garnish most hardware companies gave away to make their expensive computer systems more flavorful, was quickly becoming the main dish. ”

“ Each Party shall adopt or maintain appropriate laws, regulations, policies, orders, government-issued guidelines, or administrative or executive decrees that provide that its central government agencies use only non-infringing computer software protected by copyright and related rights, and, if applicable, only use that computer software in a manner authorised by the relevant licence. ”

“ License must not be product-specific. The rights associated with a license extend to products extracted from a larger software aggregate. No restriction on other software. No restrictions are allowed on distribution of open source products bundled with products developed on other software platforms. Technology neutrality. Licenses should not be issued on the basis of the specific technology involved. ”

“ Nothing in this Article shall preclude:
(a) the inclusion or implementation of terms and conditions related to the provision of source code in commercially negotiated contracts; or (b) a Party from requiring the modification of source code of software necessary for that software to comply with laws or regulations which are not inconsistent with this Agreement. 4. ”

“ An entire industry has been built around Free Software, and is growing rapidly despite an unfavorable market. The success of software companies like Red Hat, and the benefits to vendors such as Dell and IBM, demonstrate that Free Software is not at all incompatible with business.
The Free Software license singled out for abuse by Microsoft is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL. This license is the computer equivalent of share and share alike. But this does not mean, as Microsoft claims, that a company using these programs is legally obliged to make all its software and data free. ”