ChiefNode

Open source donor companies may take action?

A think tank report says that companies whose programmers give away code to open source efforts may at some point come after users, since the companies IP is being compromised. While I believe it is true that some employees "give away" code to open source initiatives, I suspect it's more likely that the employees are taking such action at the request of their employer. And most licenses these days state that the "author" has the rights to grant these licenses. . . so I'm unsure how a user would be harmed a great deal in the end. The report suggests that music company style lawsuits are coming. . .but I am more doubtful. However, I read only the summary you see above, and not the whole dang thing. Perhaps the full report better manages these issues.

posted by Dana Bostrom @ 07:50