Intellectual Property and Open Source

When you build a robot, you can lock it in a cupboard so nobody walks off with it. But what about a song you wrote, a game you coded, or a logo you designed? Those aren't physical things you can lock away — someone could copy them a thousand times without ever touching the original. So how does the law protect a creation you can't hold in your hand?

The answer is intellectual property (or IP): creations of the mind. Software, music, films, photographs, drawings, book text, product designs and brand names are all IP. Just because something is easy to copy doesn't make it a free-for-all — the person who made it usually has legal rights over who may use it and how.

Copyright: protection you get automatically

The most important right for a programmer is copyright. Here's the surprising part: you don't have to apply for it, pay for it, or add a \copyright symbol. The moment you write original code, take a photo, or record a tune, copyright exists automatically and belongs to you. It means others can't copy, share, sell or change your work without your permission.

In the UK, copyright on software and most creative work lasts the creator's whole life plus 70 years — far longer than you might expect. (There are related rights too: a trademark protects a brand name or logo, and a patent protects a new invention — but for the code you write, copyright is the one that matters.)

You don't need to — the work is protected either way. But a visible \copyright notice, a name and a year is a useful reminder to everyone that someone owns this and is paying attention. It makes the ownership obvious and can matter if there's ever an argument about who copied whom. Think of it as a "no trespassing" sign: the land is yours with or without the sign, but the sign saves a lot of awkward conversations.

Licences: the permission slip

If copyright is the wall around a creation, a licence is the gate. A licence is a set of rules from the copyright owner that says exactly what you're allowed to do with their work — install it, copy it, change it, share it, sell it — and what you're not. When you tick "I agree" before installing an app, you're accepting its licence.

A licence doesn't hand over ownership. The creator still owns the copyright; they're just granting you permission to use the work in the ways the licence spells out. Break those terms and you lose the permission. Two families of licence are worth knowing by name:

Creative Commons (CC) — a popular set of ready-made licences for images, music, text and videos. The creator picks conditions such as attribution (credit me), non-commercial (no selling), or share-alike (if you build on it, share yours under the same terms).
GPL (GNU General Public License) — a famous software licence. It lets anyone use, read and change the code, but demands that any version you pass on stays open under the GPL too. That "keep it open" rule is a kind of share-alike, sometimes nicknamed copyleft.

Two ways to sell (or share) software

Now for the big GCSE comparison. Software licences split into two broad camps, and the difference comes down to one question: can you see and change the source code?

Proprietary (closed-source) software is owned by a company that keeps the source code secret. You buy a licence to use the finished program, but you can't read the code, change it, or pass it on. Microsoft Windows, Adobe Photoshop and most console games work this way.

Open-source software makes its source code freely available for anyone to view, modify and share — and it's often free of charge too. The Linux operating system, the Mozilla Firefox browser and the VLC media player are open-source. A community of volunteers and companies improves the code together, out in the open.

Neither camp is "the good one" — they're trade-offs. The table below weighs them up from the point of view of both the people who use the software and the people who make it.

Weighing up the pros and cons

	Proprietary (closed)	Open source
Source code	Secret — you can't see or change it.	Public — anyone can read, edit and share it.
Cost	Usually paid; you buy a licence.	Usually free to download and use.
Support	Official support and updates from the company.	Community forums; support may be patchy (or paid separately).
Reliability & security	Tested by the company, but bugs are hidden — only they can fix them.	Many eyes can spot and fix bugs fast, but a neglected project may rot.
For developers	A clear way to earn money; protects the company's ideas.	Learn from real code, adapt it, build a reputation — but harder to earn from directly.
Freedom to adapt	Stuck with what the company provides.	Tailor it to your exact needs (if you can code).

This trips up almost everyone. If you find an image, a song or a chunk of code online and it downloads without asking for money, that does not mean you can use it however you like. Almost everything is copyrighted by default the moment it's created, so the safe assumption is: I need permission unless a licence clearly gives it. "Free to download" only means the download didn't cost money — it says nothing about copying, editing or reusing.

And the flip side: open source does not mean "no rules". The code is open, but it still comes with a licence, and that licence sets conditions. A GPL project may require you to keep your version open too; a Creative Commons image may require you to credit the author or forbid selling it. Ignore the licence and you're breaking copyright, open or not.

Legitimate use vs plagiarism and piracy

Because IP is so easy to copy, it's worth being clear on where the line is:

Legitimate use — you have permission: you bought the licence, the work is out of copyright, or its licence (like Creative Commons or GPL) allows what you're doing and you follow its conditions.
Piracy — copying, sharing or using copyrighted software, films or music without permission. Downloading a cracked game or streaming a film from an unlicensed site is piracy, and it's illegal.
Plagiarism — passing off someone else's work (code, an essay, an image) as your own. It may or may not break copyright, but it's dishonest — and copying a classmate's program into your coursework is a good way to fail it.

Original work is copyrighted automatically — no registration needed.
You need the owner's permission (a licence, or the law) to copy, change or share it.
Both proprietary and open-source software are licensed — the difference is whether the source code is open and what the licence lets you do.