Software, software and software (and online content too)
Introduction
We all use computers. Yet there is a suprisingly low interest and knowledge in the wide public towards legal aspects and different licensing schemes. Several factors tend to contribute to this:
- Computers are usually sold with some software preloaded - this will give people the impression that 'it came with the computer' rather than it was bought together with the computer.
- At workplaces, equipping the computers is the task for the employer, so the employees do not need to think about it.
- Agressive marketing by software companies to create the impression that 'nothing but them' exist.
- Education being locked to certain providers (in many places - Estonian schools are now required to teach at least two software platforms)
- Carelessness of people - fueled by the dissonance between the numerous hysterical 'Catch the pirate!' campaigns and the reality where 'eveyone downloads stuff'.
- ...
This lecture will give an overview of the main software licensing models in use today. In addition, the main licenses of online content will be reviewed.
Proprietary software
Note: the correct term for the software sold by Microsoft, Adobe and others is 'proprietary' rather than 'commercial' - commercial use is fully possible with other licensing models as well (with very few exceptions).
Proprietary software can be defined as software with restrictions imposed by its proprietor (owner) on its use, copying and modification. Restrictions can be
- legal - mostly defined by the license agreement (EULA or End-User License Agrement), in addition to the innate copyright from its creation.
- technical - the most common is binary-only release, keeping the source code which effectively blocks closer studying or modification (closed-source software).
- the combination of these two.
It is actually interesting to see how the roles of the measures have changed over time. When Bill Gates started to ask money for each copy of his software, he relied on legal means. During the DOS era with simplified copying between the widespread PCs (and no network yet) came the age of technical means - in addition to closed source, it was the heyday of various ingenious solutions in order to make unauthorized copying impossible. It ranged from non-standard diskette formats to special dongles which were inserted into the parallel or serial port in order to allow the software to work.
Types of proprietary software
As it is often said but still frequently misunderstood - "proprietary software" does not mean the same as "commercial software". Rather, all free software can be used commercially under their licenses, while there are kinds of proprietary software that cannot (e.g. "free for non-commercial use" freeware).
Proprietary software can be divided into the following categories.
Commercial proprietary software
The most prominent kind, which is sold commercially by unit ("boxed" software; recently sometimes also by authorized download), its license agreement grants its users a very limited set of rights. The license is typically reserved for use in one (sometimes one specific) computer at a time and often to the the specific user. Copying is very limited (often, users can make a single copy for backup; other copying is forbidden), reverse-engineering, closer studying, modifying and deriving new products is prohibited. Formerly, users were typically free to transfer their software from a computer to another, sometimes even allowing simultaneous use (e.g. at home and at work).
On the other hand, due to the increased pressure from free software in recent years, volume licensing has surfaced as an option. For example, MS Office 2007 Home and Student version allows for three separate installations, MacOS X Family Pack allows five; larger-scale schemes include [http://msdn.microsoft.com/et-ee/academic/default%28en-us%29.aspx MS Academic Alliance and various volume licensing systems in business sector.
Typically used for smaller software and/or trial versions, this is proprietary software which can be freely copied (typically in its delivery form, e.g. installer), shared with others and also used for a limited period. But like the commercial proprietary solutions, it does not allow modifications and is distributed as closed-source. The free of charge use period is typically from 15 to 90 days, after which it must be registered (typically involving payment). To encourage registration, several measures are used:
- sponsor advertisements are shown either at startup or throughout the working time when not registered (adware)
- a nag screen reminding of registration is displayed for some time at startup (nagware)
- some vital functions (e.g. saving your work) are disabled when not registered (crippleware)
While some of the shareware products are fully functional regardless of registration, they become illegal to use after expiration of the trial period (protected by legal means).
Proprietary freeware
This is proprietary software with zero price. Freeware and free software are different terms - not in English but in many other languages as well. Freeware can be typically freely copied and used - however, many products limit the use by purpose, the most common restriction being "free for home or non-commercial use" (in this case, commercial users need to purchase a license just as in case of commercial proprietary product). Regardless of use, reverse-engineering, studying and modifying is forbidden, just as developing new products.
Special notion 1: public domain
Public domain, while being one of the most permissive legal categories (essentially meaning giving up copyright), can be used in proprietary context. During the DOS era there were many small utilities available in public domain (some can be found in e.g. Garbo) - but often only as binary, thus cutting away a chance for modification and further development. Second, as there is no requirement for preserving the license, public domain components can be freely used to develop a proprietary product (even some free licenses allow for proprietary derivatives (e.g. BSD, MIT or X11 license). This kind of activity is impossible with free software licenses with "strong copyleft" that forbids narrowing the users' rights).
Since 2003, Microsoft has run a campaign named Shared Source which is often touted as a counterpart to Open Source by the company. In fact, it is a family of special license agreements with certain partners (countries and large companies) who have been given partial access to some of the proprietary code - however, in most cases, the access has been read-only - quoting Bruce Perens: "look but don't touch - and we control everything". While the concept itself is nothing special (and nothing wrong as such), critics have disliked the (deliberate?) blurring of concepts.
Special notion 3: abandonware
This is a blurry category in proprietary software which are not anymore sold or supported. This has remained a gray area in legislation - on one hand, the software is still protected and the owner can enforce his/her rights. On the other hand, most abandonware has been truly abandoned with no interest from owner's side (lots of old DOS games are the best example - many of them cannot even be run on current versions of MS Windows). In this case, fans keeping the venerable software alive enrich the general software scene. There have been multiple calls for putting old proprietary software under free licenses, but due to ineffectiveness and inflexibility of current IP system, there has been almost no success.
References
Links
- Craig Mundie speaking at The New York University Stern School of Business
- Doctorow, C. (2007). Shrinkwrap Licenses: An Epidemic Of Lawsuits Waiting To Happen. InformationWeek, February 3, 2007.
- Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. The Penguin Press.
