Researchers examine open-source software licensing

As scientists turn more often to high-end computers running the open-source Linux operating system, they need to think about the licenses for the software that they use on top of Linux.

Paul A. Gottlieb, the Energy Department’s assistant general counsel for technology transfer and intellectual property, said that before he started reviewing Energy’s software licensing policies in 2000, the department’s researchers had two choices. They could either release code as uncopyrighted scientific data, freely available to all, or they could make copyrighted software available through restrictive licensing arrangements.

Now Energy lab researchers have a third choice: release code as open-source software under either the BSD license or the Gnu General Public License.