Hello List, This article published by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an extract from a draft of Chapter 6 'Open licences' of Copyright for authors, educators and librarians. It was written by Julien Hofman and Paul West. From the introduction: "An open licence, as used in this chapter, is a neutral expression for a licence from a copyright holder allowing anyone to use the copyright material subject to the conditions in the licence. There are many different open licences, some for computer software and some for other forms of copyright material. Each has its own terms, conditions and technical vocabulary and their supporters do not always agree with one another. Some, disliking the business practices of commercial software suppliers and publishing houses, want to replace copyright with open licences. Some want to allow anyone to profit from the work of others without even telling them they are doing this. ." Please read the full article online. at http://www.col.org/colweb/site/cache/offonce/pid/4765 Shri Ram Pandey Information and Knowledge Management Trainee NCSI,Indian Institute Of Science,Bangalore -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.