Licensing Freedom; An Ethical Analysis of Free and Open Source Software Licenses

Free and open source software enables users to use, read and modify the source code of computer programs. In proprietary software, access to the source code is not given and users are generally not permitted to use, read and modify the source code. Opponents of a proprietary system state that proprietary software is morally wrong and in this thesis, the arguments they use are evaluated.Several licensing schemes can be used as an addition to copyright law to give users the rights described above. The most important division between these different licenses can be made on the basis of the use of the copyleft principle. This principle obliges the licensee to distribute modified versions of the software under the same, or similar terms as the original license. In this thesis, this obligation is seen as a restriction on the freedom of the individual. Comparisons and possible justifications will give better insight in this supposed contradiction.