Open Source Issues in Business

The presentation I gave on Tuesday night (regarding commercial issues with open source) touched somewhat on the legal issues around open source licencing, although not a great deal. I did, after all, only have an hour or so, and a legal issue is not always a commercial issue - until it all ends in tears and winds up in court, that is.

Part of my research found this paper on the web entitled "Open Source Issues in Business", which looks at the legal issues of using open source in your business. It does have a US-law approach, which anyone in Australia will tell you is "interesting and unique", which would not be a positive thing to hear if it was a first date. However, the US legal regime tends to want to impose itself wherever it can go, and is having a darn good go at it wherever a "free trade agreement" goes.

So, there it is - "Open Source Issues in Business". It's instructive to quote the conclusion for your information:

"Circling back to the two hypothetical scenarios posited at the beginning of this article of a company desiring to protect is proprietary software code and hoping to make a profitable distribution, and a company that simply wants to use open source software for its internal operations: in each case, the software may be “free” but free lunches usually come at some price and so does “free” or open source software. Both companies need to learn more before consuming their free meal, and to consider that various issues that we have discussed here."

As always, feedback is welcome.