Intellectual Property Rights in Open Source Software Communities

2011 ◽  
pp. 285-290
Author(s):  
Chitu Okoli ◽  
Kevin Carillo
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Software Development ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Source Model ◽  
Software Projects ◽  
Software Development Model

Intellectual property is an old concept, with the first recorded instances of patents (1449) and copyrights (1662) both occurring in England (“Intellectual property”, Wikipedia, 2004). The first piece of software was submitted for copyright to the United States Copyright Office in 1961, and was accepted as copyrightable under existing copyright law (Hollaar, 2002). The open source movement has relied upon controversial intellectual property rights that are rooted in the overall history of software development (Lerner & Tirole, 2002; von Hippel & von Krogh, 2003). By defining specific legal mechanisms and designing various software licenses, the open source phenomenon has successfully proposed an alternative software development model whose approach to the concept of intellectual property is quite different from that taken by traditional proprietary software. A separate article in this encyclopedia treats open source software communities in general as a type of virtual community. This article takes a historical approach to examining how the intellectual property rights that have protected free/open source software have contributed towards the formation and evolution of virtual communities whose central focus is software projects based on the open source model.

scholarly journals Open Source Seeds and the Revitalization of Local Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 12270
Author(s):  
Martin Fredriksson
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Memory Loss ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
Information Politics

This article engages with the resistance against the global erosion of seed diversity following the modernization and industrialization of agriculture over the 20th century. This resistance spans from local farming communities that preserve and safeguard traditional landraces to international movements which oppose proprietary seed regulations and promote free sharing of seeds. The article focuses on the latter and presents a study of the open source seed movement: an initiative to apply strategies from the open source software movement to ensure the free circulation of seeds. The erosion of seed diversity can be seen not only as a loss of genetic diversity but also a memory loss where traditional, collective knowledge about how to grow certain landraces is forgotten. Consequently, the open source seed movement is not only about saving seeds but also about preserving and revitalizing local and traditional ecological knowledge against privatization and enclosure through intellectual property rights. The aim of this article is, thus, to analyze the open source seed movement as an act of revitalization in relation to intellectual property rights and in the context of information politics.

Open Source Intellectual Property Rights

2011 ◽  
pp. 785-790
Author(s):  
Stewart T. Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
World Wide Web ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Source Code ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The World

The open source software movement exists as a loose collection of individuals, organizations, and philosophies roughly grouped under the intent of making software source code as widely available as possible (Raymond, 1998). While the movement as such can trace its roots back more than 30 years to the development of academic software, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and so forth, the popularization of the movement grew significantly from the mid-80s (Naughton, 2000).

scholarly journals The Emergence of Open-Source Software in North America

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guohua Pan ◽  
Curtis J. Bonk
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Software Development ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Source Model ◽  
Development Model ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Course Management Systems ◽  
Open Source Software Development ◽  
Software Development Model

Unlike conventional models of software development, the open source model is based on the collaborative efforts of users who are also co-developers of the software. Interest in open source software has grown exponentially in recent years. A Google search for the phrase open source in early 2005 returned 28.8 million webpage hits, while less than two years later that number had jumped to 376 million. This paper discusses the origin of the term open source and the key tenets of the open source software development model. In addition, it analyzes the merits and drawbacks of using this model and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of applying the model in higher education. Importantly, examples are provided of computer software, and course management systems in particular, developed using the open source model. Also included are brief analyses of the Linux operating system, and two open source course management systems, Sakai and Moodle, as well as the uPortal. A timeline of major open source projects of significance in North America is provided. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential for applying the open source software development model to open and distance education.

Open Source Software Development Model

2005 ◽  
pp. 2221-2224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luyin Zhao ◽  
Fadi P. Deek
Keyword(s):  
Software Development ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Free Software ◽  
Development Model ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Software System ◽  
Software Development Model ◽  
Hacker Culture ◽  
Free Software Foundation

The open source movement can be traced back to the hacker culture in the ’60s and ’70s. In the early 1980s, the tenet of free software for sharing was explicitly raised by Richard Stallman, who was working on developing software systems and invited others to share, contribute, and give back to the community of cooperative hackers. Stallman, together with other volunteers, established the Free Software Foundation to host GNU (Gnu’s Not Unix, a set of UNIX-compatible software system). Eric Raymond, Stallman’s collaborator, is the primary founder of the Open Source Initiative. Both communities are considered the principal drivers of open source movement.

‘Patches don’t have gender’: What is not open in open source software

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Nafus
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Software Development ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Everyday Practice ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
Software Production ◽  
The Social

While open source software development promises a fairer, more democratic model of software production often compared to a gift economy, it also is far more male dominated than other forms of software production. The specific ways F/LOSS instantiates notions of openness in everyday practice exacerbates the exclusion of women. ‘Openness’ is a complex construct that affects more than intellectual property arrangements. It weaves together ideas about authorship, agency, and the circumstances under which knowledge and code can and cannot be exchanged. While open source developers believe technology is orthogonal to the social, notions of openness tie the social to the technical by separating persons from one another and relieving them of obligations that might be created in the course of other forms of gift exchange. In doing so, men monopolize code authorship and simultaneously de-legitimize the kinds of social ties necessary to build mechanisms for women’s inclusion.

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