Best of Opensource.com: Law

2016 has been quite a year for licensing and technology ownership cases, and we had some interesting articles indeed.

One topic that has the attention of many in the open source world is that of GPL enforcement, and so when the GPL enforcement action in Hellwig v. VMware was dismissed many took an interest.

Patent trolls continue to concern many of our readers, and collective action efforts to fight them have gained traction; one such effort was the EFF asked universities not to sell to patent trolls and to make a Public Interest Patent Pledge.

Articles on various types of open source licensing were also popular, including why we should educate judges on open source licensing, a poll on readers' open source license preference, and why open source licenses themselves are shared resources.

Looking ahead to 2017, patent reform appears to be increasingly unlikely, so we will all need to continue to think about other ways to act to protect open source software.

Top open source in law articles in 2016:

1. What is a URI? Understanding license terminology for compliance
2. EFF asks universities not to sell to patent trolls
3. Distributing encryption software may break the law
4. GPL enforcement action in Hellwig v. VMware dismissed, with an appeal expected
5. The case for educating judges on open source licensing
6. Oracle v. Google: What it means for software developers
7. Which type of open source license do you prefer?
8. Open source licenses are shared resources