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Open Source Law Gets Its Own Journal -- FinallyOpen Source Law Gets Its Own Journal -- Finally
Analysis of open source from a legal perspective has typically been the domain of websites like Groklaw, or the occasional column in a law journal. Now there's a whole journal focusing exclusively on the legal issues that arise from open source: the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, or IFOSS L. Rev., for short.</p>
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Analysis of open source from a legal perspective has typically been the domain of websites like Groklaw, or the occasional column in a law journal. Now there's a whole journal focusing exclusively on the legal issues that arise from open source: the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, or IFOSS L. Rev., for short.
IFOSSLR.org, if you go by their domain name, just published their first issue, available online in both HTML and PDF format, and right in the foreword the editors make their case: "Free and Open Source Software has become a serious player. It deserves serious analysis." Serious in this case means more than just talking-head punditry, but insight from the people who actually make, interpret and apply the law:
In everything that the publication does, it will strive to achieve or surpass the highest standards of academic enquiry. It will be the first publication specialising in Free and Open Source software legal issues to insist upon such standards, and in doing so the publication will raise the level of analysis of such issues and provide a stimulus for new research and analysis.
Because most of the legal discussions about open source have been so catch-as-catch-can, and haven't really had a dedicated venue -- apart from, again, Groklaw -- it's been difficult for nonlawyers to get a handle on what all this stuff actually adds up to. When there is analysis, it's typically in the context of business or daily work (how will this affect what we do?) rather than law (is this good or bad legal precedent?), and when the law does enter into the picture, it's typically not analyzed in the depth and with the criticality it deserves. Such analysis needs its own dedicated, peer-reviewed and high-minded venue, and that's precisely what IFOSSLR wants to provide.
The articles in the premiere issue touch on issues like getting local legal counsel to interpret the FSFE's Fiduciary License Agreement (which allows assignment of copyright for a project to a single person)[*]; an analysis of the Jacobsen case, which provided the first test for the courts of the enforceability of open source licensing[*]; and a review of the book Open Source Technology and Policy, where the reviewers give the nod to a mild-mannered tome that could have been a bubbling crucible of brimstone:
... this book, with its careful and sober assessment of the past, present and potential future for free and open source software, directly answers the forbidden questions head-on. It does not seek to obscure the failings of free and open source software, and is, in the end, a more persuasive advocate of FOSS, and the development model which created so much of it, than many of the more standard texts. It's the mark of the maturity of free/open source world that a book like this can exist. [*]
Likewise, it's a mark of maturity that a law journal dedicated to FOSS issues can come into existence. I'm looking forward eagerly to future installments.
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