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March 27, 2001
AUTHOR HERE
Later on Thursday, March 22, a panel was held to discuss Open Source licensing issues. It was originally hoped that a representative from BSA (Microsoft's licensing enforcement arm) would be present, but they changed their minds and did not attend. Harish Pillay, CTO for IQmind.com and an active member of the local LUG, led the panel. Other members of the panel included Shuvam Misra, from Starcom Software in India (see NSE Cluster implementation talk), myself (Liz Coolbaugh) and Lim Li Hsien, CEO of eXtropia.
[Harish Pillay]
Harish Pillay

eXtropia is a Singapore-based business with a history development Open Source and a commitment to an Open Source-based business model. Li Hsien herself is not a computer professional; her background is in law. Having studied in Britain and passed the bar in Singapore, she was able to bring an international perspective to the legal issues behind Open Source licenses.

As one of the panel members, I was unable to take detailed notes from the panel, but the discussion was quite enjoyable. There is a strong concern in Asia that existing Open Source licenses have pretty much all been crafted in the United States. As a result, it is not at all clear how enforceable they are outside the United States.

In addition, Li Hsien said there is a problem with the lack of existing case law in this area. In Singapore, there is a strong push to have commercial legal issues solved by arbitration rather than via the courts. While this is admirable for quick resolution of problems, it fails to provide case law examples that can help lawyers predict how future legal cases involving the same issues will be resolved.

Another concern is that lawyers and legal systems are very particular about specific words, how they are used and their meaning. This makes for a great deal of difficulty when multiple legal systems are involved, even ones like the US, Britain, Singapore and elsewhere, where the same language, English, is used in the legal systems.

One audience member strongly voiced his concern about software licensed under the current GPL "and any future version of the GPL", feeling that this left the future in the hands of the Free Software Foundation, which might be bought out or subverted at a future date. Although many people voiced confidence in the FSF, it is true, in the end, that we are building our future on a web of trust and must be diligent to watch for compromises that could jeopardize our future freedom.

Another issue brought up was the right of the original author to release the software under multiple licenses, as well as the impact on the software if that copyright was eventually sold or moved to other parties as a result of a death. In addition, copyright must be enforced to remain valid. What about when an author does not have the financial means to enforce their copyright?

I pointed out that this is why the Free Software Foundation encourages authors of software licensed under the GPL to assign their copyright over to the FSF. This allows the FSF to take responsibility for enforcing the copyright and prevents ownership of the copyright from passing into the hands of people who do not understand or care about the underlying issues. I was very much surprised to find that very few, if any, members of the audience were aware of this service that the FSF provides. This is an area where more publicity from the FSF would be very helpful.

A variety of other topics were discussed as well, including why Open Source systems are considered more secure than proprietary systems, etc.

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