Using open-source code to help develop new software sounds like a great idea, but beware. If developers uses a piece of code that has been distributed under the GPL, for example, the entire piece of released code that includes the GPL code has to be distributed under the GPL. That means your developers can come up with the next "killer app", but just as it's gaining steam, a competitor may point out that all of your code has to be covered by GPL, which means it has to be made available to anyone and you can't apply restrictions on the redistribution of that code. You can't really prevent your developers from using pre-written reusable code chunks, because it reduces time to market. And you can't ensure that all code is held against a copy of the license and then distribute each chunk under its own license separately. It's not viable. A small company, Black Duck, may have a solution. It provides a capability for code to be searched at both a string matching level and at a pattern matching level to identify code that has come from an environment where the code is licensed. It can then flag all of these pieces of code and ensure that the developer or legal department is aware that this may raise issues. The developer and/or organization concerned can then make a decision about whether the overall code should go under a specific license, get packaged separately from the open code to maintain the fidelity of the commercial code, or to replace the code with in-house code to bypass the possible ramifications of the other licensed code.
Read more about the caveats of using open source:
- read the article [1] at IT-Director.com
ALSO: read this [2] about Sun following through on its open source promise
Links:
[1] http://www.it-director.com/business/content.php?cid=9431
[2] http://www.fiercecio.com/story/sun-follows-through-on-its-open-source-promise/2006-08-16