Dan Bricklin has spent a lot of time thinking about Open Source issues over the past year. He's written extensively on it and just created a video called A Developer's Introduction to Copyright and Open Source: Why a Lawyer is a Developer's Friend.The video covers the basics of copyright law and software licensing. It covers some basics about Open Source licensing, including a discussion of the GNU GPL. It covers working with corporate legal departments and corporate software license policy.



Excerpts from Dan s Blog:
The audience I target consists of software developers and their management. However, I know that the recommendation or OK for purchase may need to come from corporate legal departments, hence the inclusion of the subtitle about lawyers being developers' friends, a phrase that seems to bring a smile to almost all the lawyers I mention it to (and which I hope is supported by my material). Many of the people I used as reviewers are lawyers.

The video is mainly designed for corporate training, but I made sure that it is OK for individual purchase, too. Corporations need to have developer buy-in to their policies for dealing with software licensing issues and compliance, and for doing software copyright audits, etc. They need all developers to have an understanding of copyright law and how it applies to software licensing and to their work. This video can help bring everybody up to speed with a common starting point and be the springboard for cooperation between developers and the corporate legal department.via Prashanth Rai