OSOR publishes a new “Legal Corner” section and a licence wizard!
As from February 2011, OSOR visitors discover a new “Legal Corner” section in their top menu bar. The aim of this section is to provide guidelines and ad-hoc advices around licensing and other legal aspects of using free /open source software (FOSS).
The Legal corner includes six chapters:
1. “FAQ related to legal questions” is a digest of questions answered by the OSOR team. It will be complemented by the most interesting points submitted (anonymised).
2. “Open source licences and complementary agreements” provides an overview on open source licensing and on the most used FOSS licences, without forgetting contributor’s agreements, etc.
3. “Licence compatibility and interoperability“ reminds issues and opportunities of combining, linking and merging FOSS components covered by different licences.
4. “Licence wizard” is a “question driven” guide to help finding the most convenient licence, in case software is distributed. It builds on a similar “wizard” published (in Dutch) by the government of The Netherlands (NOiV). The OSOR wizard covers some of the most usual situations.
5. “Documentation directory” provides an (evolutive) selection of relevant legal documents.
6. ”Submit a legal question to the OSOR legal expert” Last (but not least), OSOR visitors can submit legal issues to lawyers from the OSOR team, and obtain from them a documented opinion.
The new section is introduced by a quotation from a recent industry expert group report, welcoming the “increasingly well developed legal infrastructure around Open Source Software, as a solid and reliable foundation for public and commercial activity”. In a mixed ICT environment (where FOSS and proprietary, public and private sector components may co-exist) this is one of the OSOR objectives
Source of this information:
http://www.osor.eu/news/osor-publishes-a-new-201clegal-corner201d-section-and-a-licence-wizard
Author: OSOR web master
