The first review of Dan Bricklin's video "A Developer's Introduction to Copyright and Open Source" has been published here (link found at Dan Bricklin's blog).
The copy I bought last week has arrived here in Japan, so I would like to make a few remarks as well.
To start out, I strongly recommend buying this video, even though I think "authorized for viewing only by the single individual" (the license of the "evaluation version") is not something an author can do under current copyright rules, as I explained in detail last week.
While I have been looking at open source license questions for a while, I still learned something from Bricklin's developer perspective. The most interesting point was that whatever license is the default, one can always contact the author and ask for some different deal.
From the developer's point of view (and expertise) the explanation of exactly when code is separate and when it is a derivative work (thus requiring licensing under GPL if the original work is under GPL) also was very insightful. Bricklin points out that different copyright holders have different views of this question, and that therefore developers should make sure they understand the view of the author whose code they want to use.
I also liked the way the video uses a split-screen, displaying key words on the left side. However, I thought the key word "Using Lawyers" might have better been "Working with Lawyers".
Next I would like to buy a video where Bricklin discusses how developers are supposed to deal with software patents. That should be even more interesting.
Please consider doing that.
Comments and trackbacks are welcome at k.lenz.name/discuss.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at May 13, 2005 03:09 PM