Open Source Research

[irenicspace]

My company is looking into intelligent uses of open source software for itself and clients. I have the fun task of becoming very educated about the subject and helping management put together the list of questions for the IP lawyer. I have already done some investigation and know that the GNU GPL is the most popular open source license, and open

Comments

[irenicspace]

Thanks for the replies.

[yogsothoth93]

If you ask at Slashdot, you are guaranteed many good responses.

[yogsothoth93]

Mod parent up (funny)! ;-)

[irenicspace]

I am a little afriad of the overwhelming replies - Good or Bad.

[aradiasimpson]

Getting into the Unix/Linux world, eh? Too funny especially when you are mister Microsoft...LOL. Excuse me ...I just have to laugh especially since I work in the Unix field.

It really is not that bad and I can get you in contact with several people if you need info. Just IM me or call.

[ex_stonemir]

I spent a lot of time investigating the ramifications of using open source/free software in commercial products--in our case, an operating system--and the big sticking point I ran into was the nature of the licenses themselves, in legal terms.

The GPL, for example, is couched in very peculiar language, legally speaking. There are a lot of "terms of art" that are subject to significant amounts of interpretation. There's a pretty much undefined notion of something which might or might not be "inherently" part of the system, something which has no particular legal precedent and which isn't really defined in the license itself, for example.

Moreover, none of this has ever been tested in a court of law, and any lawyer worth his salt will tell you that nobody knows what a contract actually means until that happens

[irenicspace]

Thank you very much for your very useful reply!