The compatibility of open/free licences: a legal imbroglio

摘要

Thirty years ago, in February 1989, the first 'free licence' was created: the GNU-GPL licence. Since then the number of free and open licences has grown exponentially with both private and public actors publishing their own legal document. In plain language, a licence is a document that grants a permission to do something, to perform an action. When it comes to licences covering a creation (eg a software), such a document is a contract listing the permissions and prohibitions, ie the rights and obligations of both the licensor and the licensee with regard to the creation. Usually, such licences include an extensive list of permissions and some prohibitions. However, this list of authorizations and prohibitions might defer from one licence to another, creating thus compatibility issues among them. Moreover, some licences might contradict the licensee's domestic law. As a result, the reliance on open/free licences covered content for Big Data analysis is in a legal jeopardy. This article will review those difficulties and critically analyse the legal and technical remedies to it.