To begin with, it has to be understood free software is free as in free speech. When we say software is free, we speak of liberty and the rights of the user. Ironically, price isn’t even an issue in ...

The next version of the General Public License may contain a clause to penalize companies that use software patents against free software. GPL version 3, a draft of which will be released in January ...

After several years of debate and more than 18 months of sometimes passionate public comments and revisions, the latest GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3) software license will officially be ...

This is a guide to how to license research software. It collects together the advice we give to researchers on how to license research software. It is not exhaustive. Please get in touch if you think ...

As the founder of the free software movement and author of the GNU General Public License, I am writing to correct a misleading characterisation of free software presented in William Venema’s article ...

A model short-form agreement for the license of off-the-shelf, unmodified software for a licensee’s internal business purposes, drafted with terms favorable to the licensee, with explanatory notes and ...

Two recent events should give for-profit companies new reasons to re-evaluate the ways in which they use open source software as well as the extent to which they use it. These events are: (1) the ...