Libros UCLV { BETA }

The work of Richard M. Stallman literally speaks for itself. From the documented source code to the published papers to the recorded speeches, few people have expressed as much willingness to lay their thoughts and their work on the line. Such openness ---if one can pardon a momentary un-Stallman adjective--- is refreshing. After all, we live in a society that treats information, especially personal information, as a valuable commodity. The question quickly arises. Why would anybody want to part with so much information and yet appear to demand nothing in return? As we shall see in later chapters, Stallman does not part with his words or his work altruistically. Every program, speech, and on-the-record bon mot comes with a price, albeit not the kind of price most people are used to paying.

This book is about a tool that we use called intellectual property—IP for short. We use IP to allocate value and create incentives in society. Just like many other powerful tools, IP can be very useful, but it can also be difficult to work with. You can (easily!) shoot yourself in the foot with intellectual property if you don’t understand how and why this tool works. This book is divided into two parts. The first part, comprising Chapter 1–Chapter 8, is an introduction to intellectual property law. The second part, comprising Chapter 9–Chapter 14, is more of an intellectual property handbook for developers, particularly those working in the open source space. It is also applicable to those working commercially, but more often than not your experience with intellectual property will be constrained by your employer’s IP policies. The quick outline is as follows: