1 Open Source Software Licensing: A Short FAQ

Researchers, JISC Study to explore the legal and records management issues relating to the concept of the Lifelong Learner Record Q: The JISC Invitation to Tender that I’ve just received says that any software created under the project should be licensed under an Open Source Licence that promotes its reuse- I have no idea what this means. What is an Open Source Licence? A: Most commercial software business models involve licensing end-users to use programs, but denying them access to the program source code, as many software firms consider this to be proprietary. End users are thus licensed to use the binary code, but not permitted to decompile programs, or otherwise access the source code, and may not modify or otherwise alter the source code without the explicit permission of the copyright holder in that source code- this can be described as the ‘closed source ’ licensing model. Microsoft Office is distributed under a ‘closed source ’ End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) which states amongst other things that: You may: (a) install and use a copy of the Software on one personal computer or other device; an