LPI OSS Essentials study plan

Distinguish the four license families (permissive, weak copyleft, strong copyleft, network copyleft) and list two real licenses in each

Explain the difference between copyright, patent grant, trademark, and warranty disclaimer clauses in a license text

Read the full text of MIT, Apache-2.0, and BSD-3-Clause and note in your own notes what each adds or removes

Build a one-page comparison table of permissive licenses covering patent grant, attribution, and trademark terms

Trace how GPLv2, GPLv3, and LGPL interact, including what triggers source disclosure and what the LGPL linking exception allows

Explain the AGPL network-use trigger and give two scenarios where it applies and two where it does not

Compare MPL-2.0 file-level copyleft with EPL-2.0 and CDDL on scope of reciprocity

Identify three common license compatibility conflicts and justify each conclusion from the license texts

Classify ten real projects by license and explain the practical obligations a downstream user inherits

Describe how a project handles copyright assignment, DCO, and CLA contributor flows

Explain the difference between source code, object code, and the corresponding source requirement in copyleft licenses

Summarize what constitutes a license violation versus a trademark or patent issue

Define the four freedoms and map each to a specific license clause that guarantees it

Distinguish open source software from freeware, shareware, and source-available licenses with concrete examples

Compare Creative Commons licenses (BY, SA, NC, ND) and state which are approved for free cultural works and which are suitable for software

Explain the role of the OSI definition and the FSF free software definition and where they diverge

Apply CC BY-SA share-alike obligations to a remix scenario and state what the adapter must license the result under

Explain open content licensing for documentation, datasets, and code samples inside a project

Compare dual licensing, support and subscription, hosted/SaaS, open core, and foundation-backed models with one real example each

Analyze how a license choice enables or blocks each business model

Explain how open core projects draw the line between community and commercial features and the license mechanics involved

Describe monetization through services, training, certification, and marketplace ecosystems

Outline the software supply chain: upstream projects, distributions, package managers, and downstream consumers

Identify the risks a company accepts when adopting copyleft versus permissive components in a product

Describe how an open source project governs itself: maintainer roles, meritocracy, voting, and foundation stewardship

Explain release management practices including versioning, roadmaps, and issue triage

Compare communication channels (mailing lists, issue trackers, forums, chat) and state the norms for each

Practice writing a clear bug report, a patch submission message, and a code review comment

Review all six domains using a weighted checklist, spending most time on licenses and business models

Retake practice questions for every domain and log each miss with the underlying concept

Re-explain the ten most error-prone concepts aloud or in writing without notes

Confirm timing strategy and question triage for the exam format