Posted 07/09/09 at 06:45:05 PM by David Murphy

Open-source licensing can be a tricky beast. But it's not just aspiring software developers that need be concerned about the nuances of OSS licensing (or freeware licensing, for that matter). If you offer up apps on a CD or a Web site for others to grab, you're just as impacted by the parameters of licensing as anyone else. If you're just a downloader who's thinking, "why me? I just install cool programs," it behooves you to understand the differences between legitimate and illegal distribution models for the programs you fancy. While you, yourself, cannot be held accountable for another's licensing violation when you go to download software, you shouldn't encourage their efforts either. Playing by the rules is the only way to keep the spirit of open source alive.

That doesn't make open-source licensing any less confusing, however. Click the jump to find out why!

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Posted 12/11/08 at 07:30:21 PM by David Murphy

The Free Software Foundation filed suit in U.S. District Court today, alleging that networking giant Cisco violated FSF copyrights by not giving its users the ability to share and modify the open-source software it uses as the basis for some of its hardware.  That's a mouthful, so here's what happened: According FSF, the company found that Cisco was using a GNU-licensed version of Linux to power its firmware.  Only, Cisco wasn't giving its customers the full access to the source code that the GNU license specifies as a condition of use!

Click the link to see how things got worse...

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Posted 01/24/08 at 10:36:40 PM by Erin Simon

Last.fm offers free streaming full-length songs on demand with the studios' blessing, while Seeqpod the music search engine gets sued.

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Posted 10/26/07 at 10:45:31 PM by Mark Soper

Vista's activation DRM may shut you down for 'too many' hardware changes, even if you changed drivers, not hardware. Here's how to avoid getting nailed - and some advice for Microsoft.

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Posted 10/04/07 at 06:06:18 PM by Erin Simon

After unwittingly licensing his photograph to permit commercial uses, a Flickr user's photo gets remixed into a cellphone ad campaign in Australia. And, of course, sues.

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Posted 10/20/06 at 05:50:06 PM by Will Smith

Will Vista's EULA cause more problems than the operating system is meant to solve?

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