[TOS] Moving towards a first draft of TOS Textbook

[Ross Gardler]

2009/6/5 William Cohen <wcohen at redhat.com>:
> Greg Dekoenigsberg wrote:
>> So I've spent some time honing the first part of a book outline:
>>
>> http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/User:Gregdek/Textbook
>>
>> I'm through about Section 4.  Feedback welcome.

Excellent work Greg. I'll do my best to review and comment over the weekend

...

> Maybe have section that points briefly shows people how open source can work
> towards their own benefit. Most  people are not in open source because they want
> to simply give time and effort away.

I think this fits into the preface - justifying why people should
read/study the book.

> Licensing
>
> Licensing is the foundation that the software is built on. Once a license is
> selected it is difficult to change that after the fact. Changes in license have
> to be agreed to by the various contributor to the software. Careful selection of
> the license has an impact in success of the project and where the software  can
> and can't be used. Might be good to illustrate the differences between GPL and LGPL.

This is not as much of a concern if one ensures that either:

a) copyright is held by a central body

or

b) sufficient rights are granted to the project owner to allow them to relicence

For more see [1]

( of course, it certainly helps if you get the licence right first
time otherwise you risk splitting any community built so far)

I note that Greg has not yet got to the section on licences. I'm sure
he won't miss this in section 6 FOSS Governance.

Ross

[1] http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/cla.xml



-- 
Ross Gardler

OSS Watch - supporting open source in education and research
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk