Copyright in shareware software distributed on the Internet—the Trumpet Winsock case
ICSE '97 Proceedings of the 19th international conference on Software engineering
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Copyright and Multimedia Products: A Comparative Analysis
Copyright and Multimedia Products: A Comparative Analysis
Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing
Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing
Adoption of open source software in organizations: A socio-cognitive perspective
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
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Like the ownership of physical property, the issues computer software ownership raises can be understood as concerns over how various rights and duties over software are shared between owners and users. The powers of software owners are defined in software licenses, the legal agreements defining what users can and cannot do with a particular program. To help clarify how these licenses permit and restrict users' actions, here I present a conceptual framework of software rights and duties that is inspired by the terms of various proprietary, open source, and free software licenses. To clarify the relationships defined by these rights and duties, this framework distinguishes between software creators (the original developer), custodians (those who can control its use), and users (those who utilise the software). I define the various rights and duties that can be shared between these parties and how these rights and duties relate to each other. I conclude with a brief example of how this framework can be used by defining the concepts of free software and copyleft in terms of rights and duties.