Review: Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing

Reviewed by: Philip O'Brien

When I first registered my Chapter as an O'Reilly User Group, my immediate review choice was Understanding Open Source & Free Software Licensing! Being a software developer (not necessarily always of open source), I wanted to know more about the "why?" and the "how?" of software licensing. Now that I'm finished and have spread the good word about this book, many more in the group want to read it!

I'm not a lawyer, I don't run a software company or meet with friends in my mothers garage to write programs. I don't sell my soul to software monopolies but I'm also not a self-proclaimed Linux guru. What I am, is a lover of choice, rights, and freedom! This book is perfect for any of the aforementioned persons. With the right blend of legal issues and discussions, licensing alternatives available to CxOs, rights for free software engineers, and insight into understand the culture of the open-source community for the closed-source businessperson, St. Laurent outdoes himself in this installment.

Style and preciseness are among St. Laurent's strongest traits. This book becomes more of a definitive guide to licensing for open source and free software, as well as proprietary works. Annotated clause by clause, this book presents a clear, comprehensive flow through the licenses presented.

Beginning with the simplist and most unrestrictive license, the MIT software license, this book progresses logically through to other licenses that build upon the others, to the well known but less understood GNU General Public License, and even to the Microsoft Shared Source License. St. Laurent illustrates the differences between licenses at each stage of the book providing an easy transition between each.

My favourite aspect of this great book was the last section of each chapter: Philosophy and Applications. Here, philosophy and technicalities are presented in a practical, real-world setting. Examples abound making concepts more clear and succinct.

Open-source licensing and its legal implications are critical to any open-source projects. Many people underestimate its legitimacy, or regard licenses as superfluous since the source is open anyways. This is one of the many issues St. Laurent addresses.

Being a developer of both closed source and open-source software projects, I've found this book infinitely helpful! It answered the questions I've been seeking and will prove to be a reference in the future. I recommend this book to expert and novice developers, and equally to open-source vigilantes and closed-source defenders!

This book receives 4 1/2 Baltzers:

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Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing is available from O'Reilly Media Inc. for $39.95 CA. A [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/osfreesoft/chapter/ch02.pdf sample chapter] can be viewed on the O'Reilly website.