commentary

In the wake of Google's attempted intellectual property landgrab (and subsequent about face), ReadWriteWeb suggests that a new "terms of service regime" is needed for online applications like Google.

I agree, but also t men basketball shoes hink we can go one step further and "open source" legal documents.

The idea is not actually mine. John Robb, vice president of marketing and product management at Zimbra, suggested the idea to me after  blue puma shoes reading about Y Combinator's idea to offer standardized venture funding documents.

It's a great idea, one that we'll be exploring further at OSBC 2009. There's little reason for similarly situated start-ups to eac addidas sneaker h be paying law firms to recycle the same documents. Sure, it provides job security for first-year law students, but I'd rather be spending my law firm retainer on value-added services, not a logo change on the con juicy couture shoes sale tract the firm uses for all of its clients.

Using a myriad of ostensibly different legal documents also creates unnecessary work for in-house counsel at would-be buye pumas shoes for women rs. It would be much better to simply have the industry standardize on subscription/license agreements, nondisclosure agreements, etc., and then stand firm on terms. It becomes easier to stand firm, of course, if y addidas sneakers ou know that the weight of industry standards is behind you.

Robb is onto something here. We should open-source legal documents. The expertise to back them up can't easily be commoditized, but documents lik juicy couture shoes e confidentiality agreements absolutely can. Forget profileration of open-source licenses. The real problem is proprietary license/document proliferation. Let's fix that.

Mat 

 t Asay is chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfres 

 co, an open-source applications company. Matt brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open- 

 source business strategies and opportunities. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. Topics: Licensing, Strategy Tags: John Robb, open source, legal documents Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Facebook Twitter