ABSTRACT
The software industry’s history is also its future. Its history has been defined by both abundance and scarcity, and its future will be, too. In the 1970s and 80s, perceived software scarcity led US legislators to formally grant intellectual property protections to software creators. Later, a different kind of scarcity – a lack of access to source code – led the founders of the free and open source software movement to flip intellectual property protections on their head in an effort to better promote abundance. That movement proved wildly successful, with today’s software industry based on vast amounts of freely available open source software resources that both organizations and individuals collaboratively build …
Asay, Clark D, Software’s Legal Future (July 20, 2022).
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