I happened to stumble across a YouTube video by a channel called Licenseware by the title of, “A Brief History of Software Licensing – Why it exists, and why it is so important”. This video covered information about how software licensing came to be, how it is used, and why it is important in the world of software and coding. The video explains how our world has developed to become, ultimately, reliant on software for organizing and controlling everything from transportation to communication. Because of all of this, the software industry has gained many rules and regulations around when, where, why, and how software can be used. These rules and regulations are more commonly known as Software Licenses. Software Licensing is one of the topics we covered relatively early on in our course, going over the different types of licenses and their uses as well as when and in what scenarios they worked or didn’t work. The history of licensing stems from the history of copyright which came from The Copyright Act of 1710 (The Statute of Anne). This act, passed by the British Parliament, stated that authors had the right to publish and sell their work for a renewable period of time. This is relevant because Software Licensing falls under the category of Copyright Law. This is because software is ultimately seen as a type of literary work. The video goes on to talk about how the Free Software Foundation (FSF) introduced the concept of open source software which led to the development of the open source software movement and the creation of the General Public License. I found this video very interesting because, prior to watching it, I hadn’t realized to what extent and depth software licensing was similar to and fell under the umbrella of a legally documented copyright. This confusion came from the fact that open source software creates an atmosphere of open communication and sharing that doesn’t typically appear in other copyrighted pieces of work. I find it interesting that software seems to be the only field, at least to my knowledge, that has this type of sharing of information and work between other users and developers. The collaboration between maintainers, leaders, collaborators and users allows the field to expand and advance quicker and more efficiently than other fields. This video helped solidify my understanding of different licenses and the importance of not only having an active license in place but also the correct license in place. This also gave me a better concept of what to do in the future if I should choose to post any of my code online as open source material.
From the blog CS@Worcester – The Struggle of Being a Female Student in CS by Noam Horn and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.