Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law, by Lawrence Rosen

First of all, I'm not a lawyer, and my open source licensing is not something I'm intimately versed in, so with this review I take for granted that the information in this book is correct. As the book has been used in a reference in other books, and the author is well known, I don't think this is a bad assumption.

When I recieved this book I was excited, finally I could read a book which would help my brain really understand all the licenses! I sat down to read it, and was impressed with how the author took the popular licenses and broke them down into more easily understandable. I mean, they *are* fairly straight forward, but the author gets into what they actually mean in legal terms, and that's interesting.

Unfortunately it turns out that reading about specifics of Open Source law is not terribly interesting to me (I guess I'll never be a lawer) After the few introduction chapters I had to stop reading straight through it and skip around and skim the parts that interested me.

In my case this is not such a good book for snuggling up with in front of the fire (some computer books are), but it is a fabulous reference book, written for us mere mortals.