Licenses for RLI Open Source Projects

March 10^th 2017 – The RLI open source projects have  undergone a legal check-up and can now be published under public licenses. The teams working on the open_eGo and open_FRED projects have met with Till Jäger, a lawyer for copyright and media law from the firm JBB, on March 9^th 2017 for a one-day workshop in Berlin.

“Open source and open data only works if you have a good concept for licenses. It is important that the licenses for data, code, and content don’t stand in each others’ way while at the same time allowing access to our work for the largest possible group of users”, explains  RLI Project Head Editha Kötter.  As German and international law play a role here, the legal situation is very often difficult for laypersons. In order to make our projects’ results available for everyone – also in the longterm – we took a legal consultant on board. Open questions were answered and adjustments made wherever needed.

„We are now confident to be on the safe side when licensing our results”, summarizes Editha. Till Jäger is also happy with the workshop’s results: “When you issue licenses for open source, open data, and open content, you make sure that your results will be usable even after the project has ended.”