Finding The License
| Title | Finding the license |
| Overview | Student will review several pieces of software and find the licensing information. |
| Prerequisite Knowledge | Should have had an introduction to open source licenses. |
| Learning Objectives | Students should be able to find license information (in any of the places it might be located in a package) |
Background:
This activity demonstrates that licensing information for a given piece of software can be found in a number of different places and gives students the experience of finding the license information for several actual projects/products.
Before attempting this activity, students need to understand the basic
- legal framework for open source and
- types of open source licenses.
Directions:
This exercise can be done individually or in small groups. The goal is to identify which license applies to several pieces of software and where that license information can be found. I've provided some examples, each of which shows a different location of license information.
In each case, the student(s) should
- Find the site or software
- Locate the license information
- Record where the license information was found (for example, the URL of the page)
- Record which license(s) apply for each piece of software
Here are some good examples
- http://qunitjs.com
- Wordpress
- http://slack.com
- Firefox
- | The Linux Kernel
- Instagram
- Bonus Activity: Identify the paragraph in which Instagram identifies what rights it has to your photos.
Deliverables:
Students should turn in their findings -- I've provided an example format here.
| Software | License | Where Found (URL or other location) |
| Apache OpenOffice 4 | Apache License, Version 2.0, January 2004 | Under the "Open Office" menu, I chose "About Open Office". That dialog had a License button, which is where I found the full text of the license. |
Assessment:
How will the activity be graded?
How will learning will be measured?
Include sample assessment questions/rubrics.
Comments:
What should the instructor know before using this activity?
What are some likely difficulties that an instructor may encounter using this activity?
Additional Information:
| Knowledge Area/Knowledge Unit | Social Issues and Professional Practice (SP) / Intellectual Property |
| Topic | Intellectual property rights |
| Level of Difficulty | Medium |
| Estimated Time to Completion | Each license should take ~10-15 minutes to find, so the length of the activity can be changed based on the amount of time available. |
| Materials/Environment | What does the student need? Internet access, IRC client, Git Hub account, LINUX machine, etc.? |
| Author | Gina Likins |
| Source | n/a |
| License | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License |
Suggestions for the Open Source Project:
Suggestions for an open source community member who is working in conjunction with the instructor.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
