Author: buildbot
Date: Sun Mar 1 12:27:56 2015
New Revision: 941826
Log:
Staging update by buildbot for ooo-site
Modified:
websites/staging/ooo-site/trunk/cgi-bin/ (props changed)
websites/staging/ooo-site/trunk/content/ (props changed)
websites/staging/ooo-site/trunk/content/why/why_compliance.html
Propchange: websites/staging/ooo-site/trunk/cgi-bin/
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Modified: websites/staging/ooo-site/trunk/content/why/why_compliance.html
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--- websites/staging/ooo-site/trunk/content/why/why_compliance.html (original)
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<div id="content">
<h1 class="title">Compliance Costs and the Apache License</h1>
- <h2 id="software-license-compliance-costs">Software License Compliance
Costs</h2>
-<p style="font-weight: bold; color: red";>
- Disclaimer:
- <br/><br/>
- Please note that this page expresses the opinion of individuals.
- It does either not reflect the opinion of the Apache Software Foundation
(ASF)
- nor the Project Management Committee (PMC) of the Apache OpenOffice project
(AOO)
- as a whole.
-</p>
-
-<p>The software industry watchdog, the Business Software Alliance, <a
href="https://reporting.bsa.org/r/report/add.aspx?src=us";>offers cash
rewards</a> to disgruntled employees who confidentially turn in their
-employer (or ex-employer) for software piracy.</p>
-<p>They call this campaign, "Bust your Boss!" Rewards can range up to $1
million.</p>
-<p>As you probably already know, you don't own software in the same way you
own a chair or a desk. Instead, you license the software from the publisher,
and this license gives you
-permission to use the software, but only under terms specified by the license.
These terms typically say how many users or PC's may access the software. The
terms might even include
-a clause allowing the vendor to audit your usage of the software.</p>
-<p>In order to avoid the expense and penalties of a BSA audit, organizations
are increasingly adopting Software Asset Management (SAM) practices to ensure
that their use of commercial
-software complies with the applicable licenses. These practices generally
include employee education along with the purchase of software to track
licenses and software use within
-the organization.</p>
-<p>The combined cost of these SAM practices is the "cost of compliance" for
using commercial software. It is an expense that does not make your
organization more productive, does not
-benefit your customers and adds nothing to the bottom line. It is purely risk
mitigation. Along with license, maintenance and training costs, it is one of
the expenses of using
-commercial software.</p>
-<h2 id="open-source-compliance-costs">Open Source Compliance Costs</h2>
-<p>As opposed to commercial software licenses, open source software have
licenses that explicitly permit free redistribution. This reduces the cost of
compliance for many
-organizations, since tracking application usage is not needed.</p>
-<p>However, organizations that use open source software and also develop and
distribute their own proprietary software, can find themselves in trouble due
to the viral nature (copyleft)
-of some open source licenses. If one of your employees or contractors
inadvertently includes some copyleft code in your proprietary product, then you
could be required by that license
-to make the source code for your entire product freely available to the
public.</p>
-<p>This is not just a theoretical concern. As aggressively as the BSA
protects the interests of its commercial members, the Software Freedom Law
Center (SFLC) protects the GPL license
-in <a
href="http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit/";>high-profile
lawsuits against large corporations</a>. The Free Software Foundation (FSF),
in their <a
href="http://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2012/fall/why-gpl-compliance-work-matters";>November
2012 Bulletin</a>, writes about their expansion of
-"active license enforcement".</p>
-<p>So the cost of compliance with copyleft code can be even greater than the
use of proprietary software, since an organization risks being forced to make
the source code
-for their proprietary product public and available for anyone to use, free of
charge. To mitigate this risk requires more employee education, more approval
cycles, more internal audits
-and more worries. This is the increased cost of compliance when copyleft
software is brought into an organization. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
It is just the reality of
-using open source software under these licenses, and must be weighed in
considered as one cost-driver among many.</p>
-<h2 id="the-apache-advantage">The Apache Advantage</h2>
-<p>However, not all open source licenses are copyleft license. A subset of
open source
-licenses, generally called "permissive" licenses, are much more friendly for
corporate use. These licenses include the MIT and BSD licenses, as well as the
-<a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0";>Apache License 2.0</a>
that we use for Apache OpenOffice.</p>
-<p>Like other open source licenses, the Apache License explicitly allows you
to copy and redistribute the covered product, without any license fees or
royalties. But because it is a
-permissive license, it also allows you to prepare and distribute derivative
products, without requiring you to make your own source code public. So both
BSA and SFLC/FSF risks
-are eliminated, and the cost, to your business, of license compliance is
greatly reduced.</p>
+ <h2 id="the-apache-openoffice-compliance-advantages">The Apache OpenOffice
Compliance Advantages</h2>
+<p>As you probably already know, you don't own software in the same way
+you own a chair or a desk. Instead, you license the software from
+the publisher; this gives you permission to use the software, but
+only under terms specified by the license.</p>
+<p>In the case of Apache OpenOffice, this license is the
+<a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0";>Apache Software License
2.0</a>, a free and open source software
+license. Like other open source licenses, the Apache License explicitly
+allows you to copy and redistribute the covered product, without any
+license fees or royalties.</p>
+<p>The Apache License is a permissive license: companies and individual
+developers who create derivative products of OpenOffice can do so
+free of any constraints on the license to apply to the derivative
+product they release.</p>
+<p>This makes OpenOffice an excellent choice for users and developers who
+want to avoid compliance woes and related risks and costs.</p>
+<h2 id="for-users-reduced-software-license-compliance-costs">For Users:
Reduced Software License Compliance Costs</h2>
+<p>In the case of commercial software, the licensing terms typically say
+how many users or PC's may access the software. The terms might even
+include a clause allowing the vendor to audit your usage of the
+software.</p>
+<p>In order to avoid the expense and penalties of an audit from the
+Business Software Alliance (BSA), including those originated by
+employees turning in their employer for software piracy, organizations
+are increasingly adopting Software Asset Management (SAM) practices to
+ensure that their use of commercial software complies with the
+applicable licenses. These practices generally include employee
+education along with the purchase of software to track licenses and
+software use within the organization.</p>
+<p>The combined cost of these SAM practices is the "cost of compliance"
+for using commercial proprietary software products. It is an expense
+that does not make your organization more productive. It is purely risk
+mitigation. Along with license, maintenance and training costs, it is
+one of the expenses of using commercial software.</p>
+<p>Open source software like Apache OpenOffice, instead, comes with a
+license that explicitly permits free redistribution. This reduces
+the cost of compliance for many organizations, since tracking
+application usage is not needed.</p>
+<h2 id="for-developers-reduced-constraints-on-derivative-products">For
Developers: Reduced Constraints on Derivative Products</h2>
+<p>The permissive nature of the Apache License means that developers and
+companies distributing derivative products needn't worry about
+combining their code with the OpenOffice code and releasing derivative
+products under their license of choice.</p>
+<p>The Apache License has no propagative (or "copyleft", or "viral")
+effects, i.e., it does not influence the license of the derivative
+product: if you base your product on source code distributed under the
+Apache License you have no legal obligation of releasing the entire
+source code tree to the users of the program. All that is required is an
+attribution of the Apache Licensed source code.</p>
+<p>The Apache License thus reduces the need for employee education, the
+frequency of internal audits, the intensity of internal audits.</p>
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