Research On The Legal Issues Of Open Source License Agreement

Open source software is of great significance to the development of China's software industry,not only breaking the barriers of software technology monopoly,but also increasing the opportunities for developers to communicate.The open source license agreement is extremely important for open source software.It is an important sign to determine open source software and to promote the effective use of open source software.Open source software enjoys copyright is the premise to determine whether the open source license agreement has legal attributes.Under foreign law,open source software has copyright,and the open source license agreement is a non-exclusive copyright license contract.However,intellectual property rights are regional,whether open source software has copyright,and whether the extra-territorial provisions of open source license agreements can be directly applied in China.China's laws and judicial practice have not given a positive answer,and there are different views in theory and practice.At the same time,the content of computer software is complex and diverse,and in practice often presents a nested structure and a combined state,which is likely to cause succession problems and compatibility problems in open source license agreements.These issues usually involve the interpretation of the contract,and compared to the general contract,the terms of the open source license agreement are complex,technical,and difficult to interpret.In view of the technical difficulty,the lack of academic research on the above problems,resulting in the lack of theoretical guidance in the resolution of related disputes,similar courts have made different judgments,and even conflicting judgments have appeared before and after the same case.Starting from existing theories and combining the data communication principles of open source software,this article will carry out in-depth research on open source license agreements,whichcan not only resolve disputes in real life,but also enhance judicial certainty.It has theoretical and practical significance.This article starts from two typical open source license agreement dispute cases and analyzes the legal attributes,establishment process,succession determination,and compatibility issues of the open source license agreement.First,by briefly introducing the case and analyzing the focus of the disputes involved in the case,to elicit the issues that need to be studied;second,introducing the relevant theories of the open source license agreement and conducting legal analysis in conjunction with the case;third,introducing extraterritorial experience and summarizing Feasibility reference measures;Fourth,to propose specific improvement suggestions for the existing deficiencies of relevant laws in China.