To open source code or other source materials, is to make them legally safe to copy, modify, share and distribute, by licensing them with a license that permits doing so. To learn more about the variety of open source licenses available, please check out this page at the Open Source Initiative's very convenient website:
https://opensource.org/licenses
The above images are public domain images available freely online. Rather than having to draw our own similar but different representative images of these concepts, we can use that which is already available. Likewise, open source will enable a compound effect of creativity feeding further creativity and saving time and effort in gene editing. The open aspect will also ensure accountability and transparency of our code, the copyleft aspect of our license will make a legal obligation to maintain this accountability no matter who has been editing it.
The subset of open source licenses that are referred to as 'copyleft' have a stipulation that all copies, sharing, distribution and derivative versions carry the same license that the original was published under. This ensures that that which has been provided to the public and made open to scrutiny remains available in all its subsequent forms, wherever it may go. We strongly insist that our work is licensed in a copyleft way when possible, because we want to ensure that gene editing does not become locked away by those with narrow minded agendas. Some people may try to dissuade us from such licensing, but it is always worth asking why, and for whom. We are not here to squeeze money out of people. We are not here to make an investor a 5 year ROI. We are here to make everyone a genetic profit over the course of their lifetimes, those of their children, grandchildren, and endless generations thereafter. This is, in short, bigger than money.
The GUESS Universal Editing Suite and SDK is licensed under the GNU GPL v2. Some may ask why not GPL v3, the answer is because we have seen loopholes in GPL v3 that make it a weaker option than GPL v2.
Our hardware projects including the Geneticiser, are under the TAPR Open Hardware License.
