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Article overstates risks to enterprises

Article overstates risks to enterprises

Posted Aug 8, 2008 11:32 UTC (Fri) by dps (guest, #5725)
In reply to: Article overstates risks to enterprises by gdt
Parent article: The Pitfalls of Open Source Litigation (InternetNews.com)

While it is true that software can be examined it is almost certantly worth keeping track of
what code came from where (and what the relavent licence is). Attempting to deduce this
information after the fact can be very difficult and expensive.

What the article fails to state is that this applies with equal, if not more, force for
non-free components. Some commercial software comes with source code but requires royalities
if you distribue sofwtare containing it.

If you are writing GPLed software none of this matters. You can freely pull in bits at random
from other GPLed software as this only requires things you were going to do anyway.


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FUD in the headline

Posted Aug 9, 2008 15:57 UTC (Sat) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

The FUD is the word "enterprises" in the headline. The companies getting sued are hardware vendors that bundle GPL software (ok, busybox) without complying with the license. This happens with all kinds of software -- MSFT sued 21 resellers for example.


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