Find out what you need to know before watching this course. While you don't need to have extensive prior knowledge of the legal concepts of copyright, trademark and patent, you should at the very least, have at least some rudimentary understanding of what open source software is. John will also provide a course outline.
- [Voiceover] There is no specialized knowledge of intellectual property law, copyrights and licensing that are required for this course. Most likely you fall into one and perhaps both of the following camps, you're looking to start an open-source project, or you want to contribute to an open-source project, but are just not sure how. You don't need to understand what the business of open-source is. This course will cover the law and the basics, as well as the ecosystem around open-source. Hopefully you have at least some idea of what open-source software is.
This is not a coding course. Rather, it's an exploration of the legal and business aspects of open-source software licensing—including topics such as contributor agreements and patent licenses. The major open-source licenses (GPL, MIT, and Apache) are covered in depth, and John also provides an overview of establishing a business entity for your software project: a key factor in the ongoing success of many open-source communities.
- What is a license?
- What is a software license?
- Understanding the principles of open source
- Exploring the three basic licenses: GPL, MIT, and Apache
- Choosing the right open-source license
- Working with Creative Commons
- Dual licensing
- Granting contributor license agreements
- Establishing a legal business entity for your development project