Goals, responsibility and history of the Open Source Institut

The Open Source Institut, names ifr OSS, is a private Institut. It attend the rapid development of free software with law and order. On the top ifr OSS keep busy with questions of rules from Open Content and Open Access and with general questions from the area of IT law, copyright, patent law, contract law and competition law. The ifr Oss makes inputs, writes comments and lecture. It is a virtual Institut without libary, seminar rooms and organisational connection with public Instituts.

Open Software ist an oeconomical and a social important movement and answer to juridical questions. Because the developer don't get royalties. The developer use Open software for the coverage of the free availability of the software.

Open software can use from all user to broadcast, to change and to copying - without royalties. But open Software is'nt in a room without rules.

The individual development projects adjust the availability of the programms based of binding royalties.

The main task of ifr OSS is the argument with the royalties text from Open Source/Content.

A part of the developer prefer the name Free Software, the others the name Open Source Software.

Ifr OSS as an independent institut use the names Free Software and Open Source Software synonymical.

The Institut was founded 2000 from Till Jaeger and Axel Metzger in Munich. 2001 accomanyed Olaf Koglin, Till Kreutzer and Julia Kung. Since 2003 the ifr OSS has worked in Austria too.

The ifr OSS keep busy with

1. publications: The ifr attend the development of Free Software, professional publications and public publications

1. lecture: the institut take aktive part in the actually development of law for the Free Software with inputs, comments aso.

1. seminar: The Institut arrange seminar about law questions for members of staff of IT Companys and for advocate

1. documentation: The Institut documents the actually development of law with a news letter. It has a licence-center, that collects licence of Free Software and Open Concent. In the area FAQ will answer typical questions of law about Open Source.

The Weboffer has a lot of information about important Software licences. It names GNU General Public Licence.

1. certificat: the Institut gives certification about individual questions of law. But it could'nt gives several consultants.