FEBRUARY 2008
Beware the open source software risks
Four US companies have been sued for failing to comply with open source software licences. What do software users need to do to ensure that they stay on the right side of the law?
Merrill Lynch and VeriSign use it. So does the US government, DreamWorks, Amazon.com and Goodyear. And the chances are that your company is one of the thousands of organizations and businesses that are making increasing use of open source software provided and maintained by companies such as Red Hat, Novell and Oracle. There are obvious advantages: open source software can save companies money, provide them with additional rights, and is often proving to be more robust than proprietary alternatives.
The rest of this article is available to subscribers only. Subscribe today for full access to this article.
Alternatively take a free trial, giving you access to the current issue's contents*
If you are already a subscriber, please log in below to access the rest of this article.
*excludes some surveys and articles.