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2006

Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

Intellectual Property Law

Patent

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Unravelling The Myth Around Open Source Licences - An Analysis From A Dutch And European Law Perspective, Lucie Guibault, Ot Van Daalen Jan 2006

Unravelling The Myth Around Open Source Licences - An Analysis From A Dutch And European Law Perspective, Lucie Guibault, Ot Van Daalen

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Open source software licences are based on two fundamental principles: the possibility for users to use the software for any purpose and the possibility to modify and redistribute it without prior authorisation from the initial developer. Some open source software licences, like the General Public Licence (GPL), also impose a corollary obligation on the licensee: to make the source code available to other developers. The idea behind this form of licensing is that when programmers can read, redistribute and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. A number of legal challenges need to be addressed …