Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

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Key definition

Open source software definition

What does Open source software mean? In legal practice, open source software describes software made available in source-code form under licences that permit use, copying, modification, compilation and redistribution, typically without licence fees. It is not defined in UK or Irish statute or case law; the term is descriptive and aligns with the Open Source Initiative’s Open Source Definition. The governing rules are set by the licence. Permissive licences (e.g., MIT, BSD, Apache 2.0) allow broad reuse subject to retention of notices and attribution, often with an express patent licence and a warranty/liability disclaimer. Copyleft licences (e.g., GPL, LGPL, AGPL) require that modified or combined works...

Free and open source software audits: legal governance, licence compliance, IP risk and transaction warranties, with practical steps and tools

Published by a LexisNexis TMT expert

Practice notes

In a climate where online connectivity underpins commerce, cloud services let us open files and hold vast datasets without running our own Servers, and the Internet of Things (IoT) could even let a fridge tap into our banking details, so where does free and Open source software (FOSS) fit? Whether they realise it or not, people come into contact with FOSS every single day. It forms the backbone of the servers that host software, grant us access to the internet, and support many online services we now take for granted. The role of software in business, and the way software is produced, have altered profoundly. It is increasingly normal for competitors to work side by side on joint research and development in an age of ‘collabor-etition’ or ‘co-opetition’. Numerous efforts, including Open Stack Cloud, bring companies together in shared development. FOSS Activity sits at the forefront of this collaborative software model. Yet it is not only organisations building software that feel the effects of the FOSS movement. Business use of FOSS is at an all-time high. FOSS is no longer confined to the edges of software development, but today occupies a critical...

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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