Recommended Read: Intellectual Property and Open Source
I just finished reading Van Lindberg’s “Intellectual Property and Open Source: A Practical Guide to Protecting Code” (published at O’Reilly) - an excellent book for everyone interested in the broader topic of IP (intellectual property), the US system of patents, trade marks, trade secrets and copyright and how developing code (not only in an open source environment) fits into this.
As an author Van Lindberg is an odd fish - he is a software engineer and praticing attorney. Which means that you will find a lot of legal principles explained through analogies in coding - which in turn makes them rather easy to understand (if you are a techie that is). The book starts off with some general information about the legal system in the US, gives great explanations on the various topics which are connected to IP (copyrights, patents, etc) and then goes on and explains the very real implications this all has on open source software development (both from an open source project as well as contributor point of view).
What makes this book so relevant for pretty much every startup which develops code or makes use of freely available open source code is the simple fact that it gives you guidelines on what you can and can’t do with your code, how you can protect your code and what to look out for when you deploy open source software. All this can bite you into your backside when you go through a thorough due diligence process with a VC firm in later stage financing rounds. And make no mistake - this book might be written out of a US-law perspective, the underlying fundamentals are valid in pretty much the whole western world.
OStatic recently reviewed the book as well (which was the reason why I went out and bought it) - you’ll find their review here.