Legal Question in Technology Law in California

Re: Open Source Laws

The controlling language will not come from any law, but from the contract associated with the open source contract you agreed to when you used the open source software.

Open source is nothing more than a license. You have to obey the terms of the license if you are going to use the product.

I am not sure if this adequately answers your question. I suspect that you really need legal advice (i.e., an answer to the exact question: must I provide the open source software?) and you cannot get legal advice on this forum because the attorneys here have not seen the terms of the open source license you must adhere to. (I mean, just for example, BSD carries different terms than Linux and both differ greatly from Mozilla.)

If you want to get legal advice about your particular situation, you need to consult an attorney with an understanding of open source licensing. You may be able to find such an attorney at http://www.computercounsel.com or feel free to call me at (650) 842-8481.

Re: Open Source Laws

There is no one legal definition of "open source." Software is either Public Domain or it is copyrighted.

The most commonly used "open source" software is GNU/Linux which is copyrighted by its various authors, and released pursuant to the GNU Public License (see gnu.org for details). If the software in question was released under the GNU Public License, you must provide the source code -and- a copy of the GNU Public License to anyone to whom you distribute it.

Copyright holders (authors) are free to release their works under the GNU Public License, some other kind of license, or to merely rely on the copyright law. Usually users must agree to the terms of a license (by clicking Yes, or by distributing software that was released under the GNU Public License).

If there is no specific reference to a license or to the Public Domain associated with the software, you would be wise to assume it is copyrighted by somebody. You did not say what, if any, copyright notices or licenses you received when you obtained the software. Software has copyright protection, even without a copyright notice, unless the author has explicitly done something to place it in the Public Domain.

I would look at the source code, and an ASCII dump of the object code, for a copyright notice and license info (if any), then ask your question again.