Heather Meeker is a shareholder at the Silicon Valley office of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, an international law firm well known for its intellectual property practice. She specializes in drafting and negotiating intellectual property transactions for software and other technology clients, with an emphasis on open source software. She is co-chair of the ABA committee to open source. Heather was a programmer/analyst before becoming an attorney.
In programmer heaven, all software is open source software. Solving problems
is as easy as downloading the code you need - none of which comes with any
nasty copyright baggage - and the only part you need to write for yourself is
the coolest, most interesting algorithm, which compiles, runs, and works on
the first try. Naturally, there aren't software patents in heaven, either: I
don't think there are any patent examiners who could get through the pearly
gates, do you?
When you get there though, I would think twice about using that little red
hat logo.
Programmers, now politicized by the free software movement, spend a lot of
time arguing about copyrights and patents - whether they're morally right or
wrong and how widely they should be enforced. But they don't think much about
trademarks. Trademarks, in a way, are the most bulletproof form of
intellectual propert... (more)
To Open Source or not to Open Source - that is the question. Or is it? Open
Source has matured into a robust development model, and many businesses that
shied away from it are reconsidering it. The good news these days is that
Open Source is no longer an all-or-nothing choice. What Is a Dual-Licensing
Model?A dual-licensing model is a business model in which a company that
markets a commercial software product gives its licensees the choice of two
licensing models: Open Source and closed source (or "proprietary"). In this
business model, a customer can choose to license the softw... (more)
Heather Meeker is a shareholder at the Silicon Valley office of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, an international law firm well known for its intellectual property practice. She specializes in drafting and negotiating intellectual property transactions for software and other technology clients, with an emphasis on open source software. She is co-chair of the ABA committee to open source. Heather was a programmer/analyst before becoming an attorney.
David Lucas
Shaul Efraim
Terence Martin Breslin
Cory Marchand
David Hughes
James Carlini
John Iffert
Dan Stolts
Joe Zeto
