The spread of free software and the subsequent promotion of its use by governments throughout the world is a fascinating phenomenon. Many countries currently are considering laws in which free software would be favoured or, at the very least, promoted over proprietary software for public administration for a variety of reasons, including transparency, security, choice and cost. What has been lacking in this approach is any in-depth consideration about the intellectual property issues. Most of the people involved in free software development rely on the GNU GPL or on other free software licenses, such as the BSD licenses, which originally were developed for common law or Anglo-Saxon legal systems.

When software is produced it an automatic subject of copyright protection, and you are bound by the author's rights regardless of whether you are aware of them. Software is licensed so that others have permission to use the work. Unlike books, however, you may not copy the equivalent of a book chapter for your own use, so proprietary software licenses tend to err on the restrictive side. Free software licenses, in contrast, are quite liberal in this respect. While relying on copyright to protect the author's work, free software, in general, can be used, copied, modified and distributed, providing certain conditions are met. The conditions depend on the terms of the individual license, of which there are many.

A free software act would not interfere with free licenses; on the contrary, it would back them up and add some other necessary rights, such as exemptions from inadvertent infringement of copyrighted software for free software developers. Early implementation of such a law is crucial. The last thing the EU, for instance, needs when considering the use of free software throughout its administration is a company like SCO raising its unkempt head and demanding compensation for allegedly infringed code. Taxpayers' would be furious, free software developers nervous and citizens in general would feel the administration had plenty of time to consider the possibility of such an issue and did nothing to prevent it.
A free software act would not interfere with free licenses; on the contrary, it would back them up and add some other necessary rights, such as exemptions from inadvertent infringement of copyrighted software for free software developers. Early implementation of such a law is crucial. The last thing the EU, for instance, needs when considering the use of free software throughout its administration is a company like SCO raising its unkempt head and demanding compensation for allegedly infringed code. Taxpayers' would be furious, free software developers nervous and citizens in general would feel the administration had plenty of time to consider the possibility of such an issue and did nothing to prevent it