Scott K Peterson

509 points

Massachusetts

Scott Peterson is a member of the Red Hat legal team. Long ago, an engineer asked Scott for legal advice on a curious document known as the GPL. That fateful question began a twisting path of exploration of the legal aspects of collaborative development, including both technical standards and open source software.

Open Source Evangelist Author Contributor Club

Authored Content

Copyright statements emerging in source code

How should open source projects handle copyright notices?

Keep them simple and invest elsewhere.

Making compliance scalable in a container world

When software is distributed via container images, source code should be made available in order to ensure seamless compliance with licensing.

a magnifying glass looking at a brain illustration

Is open source software licensing broken?

Open source licensing is different for good reasons that support the collaborative development that makes open source so great.

Standards and open source: Why are patents treated differently?

The difference has consequences for how we structure the development process.

Governance without rules: How the potential for forking helps projects

Although forking is undesirable, the potential for forking provides a discipline that drives people to find a way forward that works for everyone.

What's in a container image: Meeting the legal challenges

The implications of distributing software through container images are quite different from those of the package managers many people are familiar with.