Open Source
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02 July 2021
The Developer Certificate of Origin is Not a Contributor License Agreement
dispelling magical DCO thinking to reveal the system below
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08 June 2021
Creative Commons’ 2021-2025 Strategy
a scene stalwart turns “ethical”
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25 May 2021
Drafter’s Anxiety
writing new licenses isn’t scary
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24 May 2021
The Luck of Open Source
open source without great men
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11 May 2021
Sell Babel 8
ask for the money you need so people can actually pay it
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23 April 2021
Open Gaming Deja Vu
a clear-eyed view of open from 1999
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18 March 2021
You Can Still Use the Software
Justin Colannino on what’s up with new software licenses
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26 February 2021
The Origin of the “MIT License”
how did those famous terms come about?
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20 February 2021
Cross License Foundations
decentralized stewardship of collaborative projects
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10 February 2021
Code Credit License 1.0.0
a code-for-credit software license
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10 February 2021
Open Licensing Attacks on Specific Business Models
an incomplete list
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05 February 2021
Compliance Industrial Pulpit
someone tell the enterprise about Open Source 2.0
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04 February 2021
Where are the Goalposts?
in response to Luis Villa on SSPL and OSI
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24 January 2021
Reading AGPL
a guided introduction for first-timers
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22 January 2021
Open Source is Discrimination
that’s the point, or at least it used to be
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20 January 2021
Righteous, Expedient, Wrong
OSI swings at Elastic, misses, and leaves a mess
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12 January 2021
ml5.js Takes a Stand
a code of conduct with teeth, in the wild
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02 January 2021
Deprogramming the Programmer
throw off your jargon and be free
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27 December 2020
The War on License Notices
managing uncertainty at the fringes of open licensing
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10 November 2020
How Congress Sees Open Source
a view from outside
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21 October 2020
Copyright Notices Begone
pointless costs of ancient licenses
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20 October 2020
From Justice With Love
the antitrust division groks open source strategy
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13 October 2020
Mix Many Metaphors
analogies galore in Oracle v. Google oral argument
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12 October 2020
Oracle v. Google Oral Argument
major league copyright lawyering at bat
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05 October 2020
The Ethical Consequences of Our Collective Activities
professional ethics as the missing root of entitlement?
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10 August 2020
Working in Public
now comes the coder-celebrity
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15 July 2020
A Modest Trademark Proposal
banish them from permissive open source
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03 July 2020
Programmer Power
prying open “software freedom”
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12 June 2020
Anything to Everyone
“defund the police” through the lens of “open source”
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11 June 2020
Narrative Error
that’s my hero story, and I’m sticking to it
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11 June 2020
Free & Open Picture Book
a conundrum in four panels
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01 June 2020
Round Robin 1.0.0
ready for the field
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27 May 2020
Round Robin License
new name, new terms, same great idea
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12 May 2020
“Open Source” Is Nobody’s Property
if OSI owned it, they wouldn’t be so touchy about it
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02 May 2020
Antidote
critical and alternative views on free and open source software
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20 April 2020
Common-Pool Pushovers
Elinor Ostrom without boundaries
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18 April 2020
Locked-In Customers Anonymous
stop buying software from assholes
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17 April 2020
Site of Shame
if you can’t negotiate, castigate?
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04 April 2020
Sharetribe Community Public License 1.0, Line by Line
another everything-but-SaaS license
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02 April 2020
CERN OHL-S 2.0, Line by Line
the open share-alike hardware license we actually need now?
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31 March 2020
Medtronic’s PB560 Ventilator License, Line by Line
medical device company devises copyleft license
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29 March 2020
Open Source for Business 3e
new edition of an oft-recommended book
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27 March 2020
Sustain Podcast
business models, licenses, role playing
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12 March 2020
Name Calling Isn’t Precise
“neo-closed” will come and go
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07 March 2020
Copyleft Has No Posse
war is over, want it or not
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27 February 2020
This Mess We’re In
ethics, open source, and free riding
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10 February 2020
Data Under Universal Share-Alike
limits on effective data copyleft
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09 February 2020
Reduce, Reuse, Reconsider
if you wish to make a great hacker from scratch, let them reimplement the universe
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03 February 2020
Scratch Other People’s Itches
achieve more meaning and feel less alone
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02 February 2020
Copyleft Should be Scary
if the virus wasn’t scary, would we wash out hands?
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27 January 2020
Open Source Should Come With Warranties
(from the companies who use it)
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24 January 2020
What did I just agree to?
Marc Jones on oddities in OSI-approved licenses
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24 January 2020
Luis Villa’s Licensing Year in Review
harassment made the list, and should have
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14 January 2020
Few-Maintainer Projects
reality-driven expectations
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13 January 2020
Renaming API Copyleft
naming for purpose, not implementation
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07 January 2020
API Copyleft 2.0.0-pre.1
bringing the best of Parity to API Copyleft
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16 December 2019
The Main Event
Amazon versus Startups and the New York Times
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26 November 2019
npm fund
new subcommand and metadata standard
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24 November 2019
Talking Points: Ethical Licenses
collecting points and counterpoints
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17 November 2019
Venture Capital Shill
scapegoating free software’s failures
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10 November 2019
MulanPSL
a new riff on the Apache patent bargain from China
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10 November 2019
Heather Meeker on “Ethos Licensing”
free and open is ethos licensing, too
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07 November 2019
“BSD with PATENTS” and “BSD-2-Clause Plus Patent” are Not the Same
similar licenses, very different receptions
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06 November 2019
Love this License
law brut with ASCII art
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16 October 2019
Blue Oak Test Suite
test cases for new public licenses
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16 October 2019
Blue Oak Reading List
reading list for lawyers new to open source
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05 October 2019
Cross-License Collaboratives
decentralizing contributor license agreements
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03 October 2019
Standards, Patents, Open Source
towards constructive collaboration across practice communities
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03 October 2019
Blue Oak Guidance on Mergers and Acquisitions
please stop paying me so much to fix reps and warranties
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28 September 2019
No LICENSE
they won’t see your funding plea if they never look
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28 September 2019
Our Ethics, Not Yours
in defense of Seth Vargo and morality-first licenses
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26 September 2019
The Tyranny of Time
licensing gives developers much-needed flexibility
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25 September 2019
Open Core is Not a Good Story
three better ways to express yourself and your company
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10 September 2019
Open Legal Podcast?
considering an open legal podcast
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09 September 2019
Is this conference a good idea?
forthcoming talk at a conference
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09 September 2019
The Great Open Source Shake-Up
more mandatory reading from Kate Downing
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05 September 2019
Changeblog
a few thoughts on a friend’s podcast appearance
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15 August 2019
Require Credit For Your Software
a general-purpose legal tool to require credit for open work
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25 June 2019
Get In, Get Out
open source advice for new programmers breaking into the industry
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17 June 2019
Dark Arts at Daybreak
the end of club rule in open source law
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15 June 2019
Operating Environment
essential industry background for reading open software licenses
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13 June 2019
SSPL Was Not Commons Clause
how open licensing blew its biggest opportunity of the 2010s
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21 May 2019
Mortarboard Licenses
graduate to new public license terms
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18 May 2019
Schools of Cohesion
exploring the crosswise policy biases we learn from open software
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08 May 2019
Tyranny of Permissionlessness
open source’s narrow focus further empowers those with other ways to exclude
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05 May 2019
Don’t Rely on OSI Approval
activist approval does not track practical needs
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29 April 2019
AFL-3.0 versus OSL-3.0
a redline (diff) with important network terms highlighted
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23 April 2019
#wontfix
endorsements can’t fix the Open Source Definition
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12 April 2019
Calls to Sustainability Action via package.json
a new proposal, schema, and tools
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11 April 2019
Enterprise Ready Open Software License Supplement
the status quo, plus money for devs
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06 April 2019
Stairway to Heaven
repairing broken steps to software license Nirvana
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18 March 2019
The Diachronic Treadmill License
automatically reward supporters with copyleft exceptions
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17 March 2019
License Utopia
just four licenses for all of open source
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15 March 2019
Ethical Subcommons Starter Kit
bringing openness to software of moral concern
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11 March 2019
Weak or Strong is Wrong
towards selective or consistent copyleft
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09 March 2019
Deprecation Notice: MIT and BSD
it’s time to retire thirty-year-old academic licenses
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04 March 2019
Back to IP
the copyright giant has a policy
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25 February 2019
Indie Open Source
developing resource for indie-ready business models
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24 February 2019
Open Source Software License Reading List
a comprehensive curriculum for new license wonks
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22 February 2019
First Thoughts on the Redis Source Available License Agreement
evident demand for license rules on API boundaries
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22 February 2019
API Copyleft License 1.0.0
first release of API-boundary copyleft form
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30 January 2019
API Copyleft
functionality, interfaces, and line drawing in a new copyleft paradigm
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12 January 2019
Shared Component License
first shot at a short, plain license in the vein of Mongo’s SSPL
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12 January 2019
Outer Source
open software by closed methods
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18 December 2018
Apache-2.0 versus ECL-2.0
a redline (diff) showing substantive changes
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05 December 2018
Open Source is Not About You
a minimal, functionalist view of open source
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04 December 2018
Open Handicaps
Did permissive used to advantage open work like copyleft does today?
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12 November 2018
Selective Openness
making money by choosing what to give away
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05 November 2018
The Open Source Definition as Copyleft Regulation
an in-depth review of commonly cited criteria
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04 November 2018
The Copyleft Bust Up
loopholes, licenses, and realpolitik in open source
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24 October 2018
How to Speak Copyleft
the missing vocabulary of copyleft design
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17 October 2018
Elsewhere: Mapping Open Business Models
crosspost from the License Zero blog
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07 October 2018
Seeking Comment: Copyright Notice Recommendation
first stab at a pragmatic best-practice guide
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01 October 2018
Indirect Licensing
dispensing software licenses in the Internet era
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30 September 2018
Contributor Councils
relicensing without foundation, BDFL, or unanimity
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23 September 2018
Patents for Software Freedom
gun-shy insurgents and the heavy weapons of IP law
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22 September 2018
Bilking Angels
celestial finance for earth-bound developers
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21 September 2018
Crowd Hiring
assurance contracts for short-term open software maintenance
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18 September 2018
Quick Read of Tidelift’s Lifting Agreement
nits picked in the developer terms for a new pay-the-devs company
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17 September 2018
Private Changes in Free Software Copyleft Licenses
Where’s the fifth freedom?
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02 September 2018
Enforce Open Source Licenses with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
takedown power for DIY developers
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28 August 2018
Unhappy Coincidences
marriages of licensing convenience, and changed circumstances
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23 August 2018
Selective Mythology
defining open source for fun and profit, in the shadow of the enterprise
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12 July 2018
The Posterity Public License
a strong-attribution open source license
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15 January 2018
MPL-2.0 versus OPL-2.1
a redline (diff) showing changes
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09 January 2018
I Have Another Blog
you may want to subscribe on License Zero, too
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09 January 2018
Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité versus - Réciprocité forte
a redline (diff) showing changes
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06 January 2018
CLAs are Not a Sham
licensing with friends, improved and improving
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12 November 2017
Debian Free Software Guidelines versus the Open Source Definition
a redline (diff) showing changes
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16 October 2017
Mercenary Rapport
moral blindness in open source as social media
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15 October 2017
Unsustainability at Scale
today’s tools for yesterday’s problems tomorrow
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09 October 2017
Feed this Bear
indie coder, promote thyself!
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26 September 2017
Overkill
doing IP law wrong, and getting away with it
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12 September 2017
The License Zero Manifesto
sustainable software in the open
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31 August 2017
Null Value
against demise of the hacker public license
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09 June 2017
Switchmode Developer Agreement
an open form contract for open source contractors
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06 June 2017
Open Software Service Terms
legal terms for paid web apps, now available in the English language
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04 June 2017
It’s Not About Community
another view of Open Source
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26 May 2017
Open Source: Theory of Operation
a short, practical guide to open source software for programmers at work
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29 March 2017
Open Source License Business Perception Report
the pain and confusion of common open licenses, roughly quantified
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16 February 2017
Against Legislating the Nonobvious
short-order feedback on the default contributor license in GitHub’s draft terms of service
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10 February 2017
The Mendicant Maintainerati
no holy fools for Open Source
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21 September 2016
The MIT License, Line by Line
171 words every programmer should understand
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13 May 2016
I Don’t Want to Know What “Open Source” Means
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all on GitHub.
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13 May 2016
License from Who?
Safe open-source licensing means more than a LICENSE file.
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18 April 2016
The Berneout Pledge
Sucks less than CLAs!
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30 March 2016
First Read: The Fair Source License
Text and my first thoughts on a new, non-open source form license
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23 February 2016
Startup Unix
An open legal operating system for start-up technology companies
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25 September 2015
React Patent Redline
Changes to Facebook’s patent grant for React, Flux, Immutable, &c.
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22 May 2015
Blind Patches
What if open-source contributors could submit patches anonymously and choose to claim credit later?