World 3 · Creator Guardian · Lesson 11

Software, source code, licensing and open-source compliance

Source code is protected by copyright. Open source still has a licence — and each licence has its own obligations.

5 min
Jurisdictions: International / treaty
Last reviewed: 18 October 2026

Draft — awaiting editorial review

Educational content, not legal advice. Lessons are drafts awaiting editorial review.

You will learn to

Explain why source code is protected as a literary work.
Distinguish permissive from copyleft licences.
Build an inventory of dependencies and licence obligations.

Code is a work

Under the TRIPS Agreement and the law of most countries, computer programs are protected by copyright as literary works. Code with no licence is not "free": by default all rights are reserved and you generally need permission to copy or distribute it.

Permissive and copyleft

Permissive licences such as MIT, BSD and Apache-2.0 allow broad use, including in commercial products, provided you keep the copyright notice and licence text (Apache-2.0 adds patent terms and NOTICE handling). Copyleft licences such as the GPL require that when you distribute a derivative work you make its source available under the same licence (the LGPL is a variant that allows linking under conditions, without making the whole work copyleft). The AGPL also requires that, if you modify the software and let users interact with it over a network, you offer them its source.

Know your dependencies

A modern software product has hundreds of dependencies. Keep an inventory (often called an SBOM) listing each component's name, version and SPDX licence identifier. Investors and enterprise customers increasingly ask for it during due diligence.

Try a scenario

Your team finds a useful snippet in a public repository that has no LICENSE file.

What should you do?

Use it freely — public code is open source.Do not use it until the author grants a licence, or find a clearly licensed alternative.Use it, but rename the variables.

Check your understanding

PracticePractice testSee the explanation after each question.

Pass mark: 80% — for this lesson that means every question.

Question 1 of 4What does code with no licence mean?

It is in the public domain.It is under the MIT licence.By default, all rights are reserved.

Take away

Keep a dependency inventory with SPDX licence identifiers and review it before each release.

Apply it to your IP

Nothing runs or is saved on its own. Each option only opens a tool when you choose it.

What this lesson cannot tell you

Open-source obligations can be subtle and depend on how code is combined. For a commercial product, ask a specialist.