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Software → Software copyright is the extension of copyright law to machine-readable software. While many of the legal principles and policy debates concerning software copyright have close parallels in other domains of copyright law, there are a number of distinctive issues that arise with software. This article will primarily focus on topics peculiar to software.

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License compatibility is an issue that arises when licenses applied to copyrighted works, particularly licenses of software packages, can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to combine source code or content from such works in order to create new ones.

Examples

Suppose a software package has a license that says, "modified versions must mention the developers in any advertising materials," and another package's license says "modified versions cannot contain additional attribution requirements." Without direct permission from the copyright holder for one of the two packages, it would be impossible to legally distribute a combination of the two because these specific license requirements cannot be simultaneously fulfilled. Thus, these two packages would be license-incompatible.

Not even open-source licenses are necessarily compatible, which can make it legally impossible to mix (or link) even open-source code if the components are released under different licenses. For example, software that combined code released under version 1.1 of the Mozilla Public License (MPL) with code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) could not be distributed without violating one of the licenses' terms by default. This is despite both licenses being approved by the Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation.

GPL compatibility

David A. Wheeler has argued that GPL compatibility is an important featu ... Read the rest of this article

Featured Articles on Software...

Abandonware ... Software companies and manufacturers may change their names, go bankrupt, enter into mergers, or cease to exist for a variety of reasons... In most cases, software classed as abandonware is not in the public domain, as it has never had its original copyright revoked and some company or individual still owns exclusive rights... Therefore, sharing of such software is usually considered copyright infringement, though in practice copyright holders rarely enforce their abandonware copyrights...

Digital Millennium Copyright Act ... On May 22, 2001, the European Union passed the Copyright Directive or EUCD, which addresses some of the same issues as the DMCA. The DMCA's principal innovation in the field of copyright, the exemption from direct and indirect liability of internet service providers and other intermediaries (Title II of the DMCA), was separately addressed, and largely followed, in Europe by means of the separate Electronic Commerce Directive...

Stop Online Piracy Act ... Proponents of the legislation state it will protect the intellectual-property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites. Claiming flaws in present laws that do not cover foreign-owned and operated sites, and citing examples of "active promotion of rogue websites" by U.S...

Copyright Infringement ... In addition, intermediaries are now also generally understood to include Internet portals, software and games providers, those providing virtual information such as interactive forums and comment facilities with or without a moderation system, aggregators, universities, libraries and archives, web search engines, chat rooms, web blogs, mailing lists, and any website which provides access to third party content through, for example, hyperlinks, a crucial element of the World Wide Web...

Canadian Patent Law ... The granting of Canadian patents is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Canadian federal government and is governed by the federal Patent Act, the Patent Rules, and various international treaties and the regulations thereunder. The enforcement of Canadian patents is the responsibility of the Canadian Federal Court, or the Courts of the Canadian provinces...

Diamond V. Diehr ... , which may be restated as ln(v)=CZ+x -- it is possible to calculate when to open the press and to remove the cured, molded rubber. The problem was that there was, at the time the invention was made, no disclosed way to obtain an accurate measure of the temperature without opening the press...