Legal Basis
Further information: Software law, Software copyright, Software patent, and End-user license agreementMost software is covered by copyright which, along with contract law, patents, and trade secrets, provides legal basis for its owner to establish exclusive rights.
A software vendor delineates the specific terms of use in an end-user license agreement (EULA). The user may agree to this contract in writing, interactively, called clickwrap licensing, or by opening the box containing the software, called shrink wrap licensing. License agreements are usually not negotiable.
Software patents grant exclusive rights to algorithms, software features, or other patentable subject matter. Laws on software patents vary by jurisdiction and are a matter of ongoing debate. Vendors sometimes grant patent rights to the user in the license agreement. For example, the algorithm for creating, or encoding, MP3s is patented; LAME is an MP3 encoder which is open source but illegal to use without obtaining a license for the algorithm it contains.
Proprietary software vendors usually regard source code as a trade secret.
Free software licenses and open-source licenses use the same legal basis as proprietary software. Free software companies and projects are also joining into patent pools like the Patent Commons and the Open Invention Network.
Read more about this topic: Proprietary Software
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or basis:
“It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The self ... might be regarded as a sort of citadel of the mind, fortified without and containing selected treasures within, while love is an undivided share in the rest of the universe. In a healthy mind each contributes to the growth of the other: what we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of ourself. On the other hand, it is only on the basis of a substantial self that a person is capable of progressive sympathy or love.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)