Software Licensing: A Minefield Guide

Transcript

2. @listochkin
3. This talk is not a legal advice Talk to your lawyer
4. Also: In Ukraine I’m not required to make this disclaimer
5. <3 Ruby
6. 8 days total
7. No Ruby Today
8. JavaScript Bash XML Rust
9. RustFest 2017 Kyiv
10. Videos are up!
11. Software Licensing
12. OpenSource
13. Which License to Choose?
14. MIT
15. End of Story
16. GPL MPL Apache Eclipse ICS BSD EU-PL CDDL
17. Facebook PATENTS file Oracle-Google JDK lawsuit Ubuntu ZFS inclusion OpenSSL licence change etc.
18. Hard stuff!
19. Walkthrough
20. US EU Ukraine …
21. Trade Secret Trademark Patent Copyright
22. Trade Secret
23. Between you and your employer/partner
24. Trademark
25. Unregistered™ Registered®
26. Linux
27. Come up with the name Check if it is in use If not you’re good ® and ™ aren’t required
28. Patents
29. Software Patents
30. de jure illegal in Ukraine de facto legal in the US thus de facto legal in Ukraine, too!
31. WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) 162 WTO countries Notable exception: Belarus
32. Software Patents are here
33. Copyright
34. Berne Convention © is not required
35. Author’s rights vs Copyright
36. You work at X and write code Ukraine: you are the (co-)author US: X is an author
37. © 2010-2016 What’s the deal?
38. Publication date defines Expiry date
39. Changed file? New edition
40. Date is not always current! E.g. content hasn’t changed
41. You have no right to change website copyright year on January 1st if site content didn’t change
42. Licensing & Public Domain
43. Old works transfer to public domain automatically Government code can be public domain automatically
44. Dedicate to public domain Can be illegal in many countries Germany
45. Unlicense CC0
46. Who owns copyright?
47. WFH Work-for-hire
48. US if no terms are defined in the contract you give copyright to the company
49. Licensing
50. OpenSource
51. Free Software Foundation OpenSource Initiative Debian, OpenBSD, Apache
52. Goal?
53. 1. Just share the code 2. Fame and Recognition 3. Guarantee contributions 4. Allow double-licensing 5. Force OpenSource
54. 1. Just Share the Code
55. WTFPL Unlicense CC0
56. WTFPL
57. No warranty clause
58. If your WTFPL code doesn’t work I can sue you and WIN
59. Unlicense
60. Public Domain dedication Illegal in some countries
61. CC0
62. Falls back from PD to super-permissive license NOT OSI-approved
63. OMG WTF?!
64. Dual Licensing
65. CC0 + ISC + Apache2
66. CC0 ICS: permissive Apache2: … + patents
67. What’s up with patents?
68. Apache All contributors share patents Only the ones that they have Ones that are required Common defence pool
69. Don’t own patents? No risk for you
70. 2. Fame and Recognition
71. ISC + Apache
72. ICS ≈ MIT ≈ 2-clause BSD
73. 1. State my name 2. No warranty
74. Why not BSD? Too many variants
75. Why not MIT? 1. Also many variants! 2. “Use” may imply patent grant
76. ISC is the new MIT default on npm
77. 3. Guarantee contributions
78. LGPL
79. C/C++ semantics No equivalence in many languages Best to avoid
80. File Copyleft
81. MPL2 EPL CDDL
82. Big issue: GPL compatibility
83. GPLv2 GPLv2 or later GPLv3 AGPL AGPL or later AGPLv3 with Classpath Exception with Linking Exception …
84. MPL2 has it built-in!
85. CDDL and EPL are incompatible
86. MPL2 EPL + LGPL2^ + AGPL3^
87. 4. Dual-Licensing
88. OpenSource + Commercial
89. OpenCore Crippleware
90. ExtJS MongoDB SugarCRM …
91. Where is it Deployed?
92. Client: GPL Server: AGPL Client-Server: AGPL + Apache/ISC
93. Why not GPL for servers?
94. GPL provisions trigger on Distribution
95. 20000 engineers write server code Billions of people use this code 1 company No distribution
96. Contractor? Distribution
97. Employee at a service company? Distribution
98. Contribution License Agreement
99. You assign copyright to a project Project decides on licensing terms
100. 5. Force OpenSource
101. AGPLv3 GPLv3 GPLv2^
102. CLA
103. Do you need a CLA on your project?
104. YES and NO
105. Project license doesn’t define the license of contributions!
106. Inbound != Outbound
107. GitHub ToS has a “CLA” D.6.
108. Employees
109. US An employee assignes copyright to the employer by default
110. You may want a CLA-like
111. Linux: Developer Certificate of Origin Berneout Pledge AUTHORS Certificate etc.
112. Other Concerns
113. License notice in each file Licences in minified JS Licenses for all deps AUTHORS file CLA/DSO/Pledge
114. BG // before GitHub AG // after GitHub
115. We can do better to ease the life of others and reduce legal risks
116. CC0 + ISC + Apache2
117. “Yes, patents exist, we’re all in this together”
118. “Yes, use it in your closed-source project”
119. “Yes, I know you’ll forget to put my name and license into a final build, and that’s OK”
120. Take Actions!
121. 1. StackOverflow MIT Add CC0/ISC to your profile
122. 2. Read Your Contracts!
123. 3. Don’t be afraid to dual-licence
124. 1. CC0 + ISC + Apache2 2. ISC + Apache2 3. MPL2 4. … 5. …
125. Or just use MIT because nobody cares anymore
126. Stories: Facebook PATENTS file Oracle vs Google OpenSSL license change Ubuntu ZFS