I went to a breakast seminar in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago run by Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind the out-law.com site. I normally stay well clear of legal matters – especially early in the morning – but the title was irresistable: Open source software: the legal and commercial issues (yes, I know I’m sad).

The seminar was aimed at business folks, and gave an encouragingly upbeat message: open-source is playing an increasingly important role in IT, here’s how to minimise the risks from a legal perspective. What was interesting for me was their message about the importance of copyright. Open-source and secret-source proponents clash frequently over software patents, but we all agree violently on the importance of copyright. If you can’t copyright your code, then you can’t licence it either with free software or restrictive proprietary licences.

Edinburgh is of course home to one famous multi-millionaire whose fortune rests entirely on copyright. J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books are copyright works. Copyright means anyone is free to buy and read the books, but freedom to read doesn’t mean freedom to rip off her ideas. If I copy and paste chunks of Harry Potter into my own Hairy Patter works – or launch a range of Quidditch sticks – J K will soon send the boys round. The recent The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail versus The Da Vinci Code case shows that issues of plagiarism are well understood and can be dealt with by the courts.

What is odd is that in software terms, J K R’s works are released in source format: anyone in the world can read every word. In fact, it’s a nonsense to think of books being published any other way. But according to software companies, releasing source would lead to the destruction of their industry. So where did the software industry go wrong?

Surely, it would make more sense for software to be copyright-able only as source code?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Open-source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.