Ethics and Ownership

CopyriGHT and ownership

• Show understanding of the need for copyright
  legislation
• Show understanding of the different types of software
  licencing and justify the use of a licence for a given
  situation
• Licences to include free Software Foundation, the
  Open Source Initiative, shareware and commercial
  software

Commercial Software

• Copyrighted software, owned by creator / company
• In general, users pay for the right-to-use:
  • i.e. User have no right to copy and re-distribute software
• Prohibit reverse engineering - deriving the source code from the compiled code

Licensing types

• Freeware - Copyrighted, but free to use
• Shareware - Free "trial" for a period of time, and/or need to pay for premium functions
• Subscription base

Open source software

• Sometimes refers to free software (Cambridge use this term, very easy to confuse with freeware)
• Source code is available for public, usually:
  • Free to use
  • Free to modify
  • Free to re-distribute modified version
  • ... but the original license and creator must be abide of
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ocq6_3-nEw

Open source foundations

• Organizations to promote opensource software:
  • Free software foundation - GNU public license
  • Open Source Initiative
  • Linux Foundation etc.