Open Source Blog

On Friday I had a an interesting and enjoyable lunch with Mark O’Conor partner with law firm DLA Piper with the conversation covering open source, outsourcing, advertising, IP, patents, GPLv3 and much more besides.

O’Conor is closely involved with the legal implications of open source, although he himself admits that in this particular field he bows to DLA Piper colleague Mark Radcliffe, who happens to be gerenal counsel, pro bono, for the Open Source Initiative.

Prompted by O’Conor I tracked down Radcliffe’s recently launched blog where I found his take on the GPLv3. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but for the record, those ten are:

1. Clarifying the Scope of GPLv3.
2. Patents.
3. Expanded Compatibility.
4. Broadened Scope of Works.
5. Termination.
6. Modification of Software for Consumer Products.
7. Limitations on Digital Rights Management.
8. Use of Contractors.
9. Application Service Provider (ASP).
10. Additional Terms.

Radcliffe concludes:

“I believe that the GPLv3 is a very valuable addition to FOSS licenses and solves many of the challenges faced by GPLv2. Companies distributing FOSS should consider it and companies using FOSS should be prepared, in most cases, to accept it.”

O’Conor came armed with valuable information, and another source I should mention is this paper from the University of Southampton on open source business models.

I haven’t had a chance to read through the paper myself yet, but anything that helps to ease the understanding of how vendors are deploying different models to make money from open source software has to be worth a look.

It also features case studies that demonstrate the five identified models (support contracts, split licensing, community, value-added closed source, and macro R&D infrastructure).

It will be interesting to see how the authors define those models, and how the five compare with the 13 models previously identified by MySQL CEO Marten Mickos. More on that once I’ve digested it.