Topic 1.3 Open Source Software and Licensing

Question 1

What are — in a nutshell — the “four freedoms” as defined by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation?

Answer 1

0. “The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).”
1. “The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.”
2. “The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).”
3. “The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.”

Question 2

What does the abbreviation FLOSS stand for?

Answer 2

Free/Libre and Open Source Software is another popular term, which unmistakably emphasizes the idea of freedom also for other languages other than English

Question 3

You have developed free software and want to ensure that the software itself, but also all future works based on it, remain free as well. Which license do you choose?

Answer 3

GPL version 3

Question 4

Which of the following licenses would you call permissive, which would you call copyleft?

Answer 4

Simplified BSD License: permissive

GPL version 3: copyleft

CC BY: permissive

CC BY-SA: copyleft

Question 5

You have written a web application and published it under a free license. How can you earn money with your product? Name three possibilities.

Answer 5

1. Dual licensing, e.g. by offering a chargeable “Business Edition”
2. Offering hosting, service, and support
3. Developing proprietary extensions for customers

Question 6

What is the GNU project?

Answer 6

GNU started as an initiative to develop an operating system  from scratch, to make it available to the general public and to improve it continuously with the general public.

It then created the GNU Public License (GPU License).

Question 7

Describe CopyLeft/GPL and Lesser GPL

Answer 7

• Free Software Foundation (FSF) has formulated the GNU General Public License (GPL) as one of the most important licenses for free software, which is used by many projects, e.g. the Linux kernel.
○ In addition, it has released licenses with case-specific customizations, such as the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which governs the combination of free software with modifications made to code where the source code for the modifications do not have to be released to the public GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), which covers selling access to hosted software, or the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), which extends freedom principles to software documentation.
• Critics often call the copyleft principle “viral”, since it is transmitted to subsequent versions.

Question 8

What is the OSI in regards to licensing.

Answer 8

Open Source Initiative (OSI), developed a standardized procedure for checking software licenses for compliance with its Open Source Definition

Question 9

What is the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)? What are its goals?

Answer 9

1. They believe maximum freedom should help the software to be as widely distributed as possible by leaving the editors of the software alone to decide how to proceed with the edits.
2. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
   ○ Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
   ○ Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

Question 10

What is Creative Commons?

Answer 10

The author makes her work available to the community, but can choose from a set of features those that need to be considered when using the work — the more features she chooses, the more restrictive the license.

Question 11

Describe CC BY (“Attribution”)

Answer 11

The free license that allows anyone to edit and distribute the work as long as they name the author.

Question 12

Describe CC BY-SA

Answer 12

As CC BY, except that the modified work may only be distributed under the same license. The principle reminds of the copyleft, because the license is “inherited” here as well.

Question 13

Describe CC BY-ND (“Attribution-NoDerivatives”)

Answer 13

Like CC BY, except that the work may only be passed on unmodified.

Question 14

Describe CC BY-NC (“Attribution-NonCommercial”)

Answer 14

The work may be edited and distributed by naming the author, but only under non-commercial conditions.

Question 15

Describe CC BY-NC-SA (“Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike”)

Answer 15

As BY-NC, except that the work may only be shared under the same conditions (i.e. a copyleft-like license).

Question 16

Describe CC BY-NC-ND (“Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives”)

Answer 16

The most restrictive license: the distribution is allowed with attribution of the author, but only unchanged and under non-commercial conditions.