Module 04
Open Source Software and
Licensing
Do
Chapter 3 and 4 Exams
Exam Objective
1.3 Open Source Software and Licensing
Objective Description
Open communities and licensing Open Source Software for
business
Open Source Licensing
Open Source Philosophy
● Philosophy that users have the right to obtain the software source code and
modify it for their own use.
● Software projects use source code; a human-readable set of computer
instructions.
● Unix source code language preceded Linux. Unix was created at AT&T Bell
Labs in 1969.
● Standards organizations like IEEE and POSIX ensure that code has the
ability to be compatible with other programs and operating systems for
collaboration.
● GNU Project built tools that are compatible with UNIX, which were used to
create Linux and now make Linux a more complete package.
Open Source Licensing
● Purchasing Software:
○ Ownership - Who owns the intellectual property
○ Money Transfer - Does it cost anything? How do you pay?
○ Licensing - What do you get? What can you do with the software? How
many computers? Can you share it?
Open Source Licensing
● End User License Agreement (EULA) is a legal document you
must accept before installing software.
● GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) is a license that
states the source code must be made available to anyone and that
anyone can make changes. *Changes must be under the same
license.
● Free and Open Source Software is software where anyone can
view source code, modify it, and redistribute it.
The Free Software Foundation
“Two groups can be considered the most influential forces in the world of open
source: The Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative.”
● Founded in 1985 with goal of promoting free software. Advocates for
freedom to share, study, and modify the underlying source code.
● Enforces copyleft, the philosophy that if someone modifies free software,
they are required to share those changes when they share the modified
software.
● Developed their own licenses which are free and are based on GNU General
Public License (GPL). **Also GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPLv2, and LGPLv3
The Open Source Initiative
● Licenses without copyleft are called permissive.
● Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is an term used to refer to the
open source community, which consists of Free Software and Open Source
as a collective (a catch-all term).
● Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) uses the term libre to define
the difference between free from restrictions (Libre) and free from cost
(Free).
Creative Commons
● Attribution – Must acknowledge the author
● ShareAlike – Copyleft
● No-Derivs – You may not change the content
● NonCommercial – No commercial use
● Combinations are allowed, such as Attribution-No-Derivs-
NonCommercial
Creative Commons
Attribution (CC-BY) You can use CC BY content for any use but must credit the
copyright holder.
Attribution ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) Copyleft version of the Attribution license
Attribution No-Derivs (CC-BY-ND) You may redistribute the content under the same conditions as CC-
BY but may not change it.
Attribution-NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC) Like CC BY, but you may not use it for commercial purposes.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY- Requires that your changes be shared under the same license.
NC-SA)
Attribution-NonCommercial-No-Derivs (CC-BY- Allows sharing the content to be used for non-commercial
NC-ND) purposes, but people may not change the content.
No Rights Reserved (CC0) Public domain
Open Source Business Models
If the software is free, how can a company monetize it?
● Offer products and services; Red Hat and Ubuntu
● Create tools; Wireshark
● Package hardware and open source software; Tivo, appliances
