Millions of computer users regularly bind themselves to software license terms with the click of a mouse, usually without reading anything but the word "agree." Licenses for software as diverse as Microsoft Windows and Linux, and terms of use for websites such as Facebook, are all subject not only to intellectual property and commercial law, but also to the private law of the license, which comes in many forms, each with its advocates. Microsoft, for example, maintains that its proprietary model gives users the rights they need while creating the incentives that have made the United States the global software leader, while Richard Stallman - creator of the GNU General Public License and author of a number of free software programs - asserts that proprietary licensing enables software companies to "hoard" software they should be sharing. In The Software License Unveiled, Douglas Phillips looks at both of these extremes and questions how these proliferating but largely unread license terms affect access to software, one of the economy's most valuable resources. While highlighting the obvious divergences, he makes the more illuminating case that most current models - spanning the spectrum from proprietary to free - have one key feature in common: to an increasing extent, each license model extends, modifies, or displaces public law that would otherwise apply. Unlike books that advocate one form of licensing or another, this one reframes the debate to propose that going forward a key challenge for lawyers, scholars, policymakers, and the public is to consider whether "legislation by license" should be the means for controlling software access.

数以百万计的计算机用户通常只需点击鼠标就可以遵守软件许可条款，通常只需阅读“同意”一词即可。微软Windows和Linux等各种软件的许可，以及Facebook等网站的使用条款，都不仅受制于知识产权和商法，还有许可证的私法，它有多种形式，每种形式都有其倡导者。例如，微软坚持认为，它的专有模式为用户提供了他们需要的权利，同时创造了使美国成为全球软件领导者的激励机制，虽然GNU通用公共许可证的创建者、许多自由软件程序的作者Richard Stallman声称，专有许可使软件公司能够“囤积”他们应该共享的软件。在公布的软件许可证中，道格拉斯·菲利普斯（Douglas Phillips）看到了这两个极端，并质疑这些激增但大部分未读的许可条款如何影响对软件的访问，软件是经济中最有价值的资源之一。在强调明显分歧的同时，他提出了一个更具启发性的案例，即大多数当前模式——从专利到免费——都有一个共同的关键特征：在越来越大的程度上，每个许可模式都扩展、修改或取代了原本适用的公法。与提倡一种许可形式或另一种形式的书籍不同，这一点折射出了一个争论，即对律师、学者、决策者和公众提出的一个关键挑战是考虑“许可证立法”是否应该是控制软件访问的手段。