What's In Your Code?

How embarassing is this?

First Sony takes a beating for including copy protection in the first place...but then..the whole thing explodes in their face with allegations that their code itself used open source code improperly. Check this. Its an example of two things - that organizations really don't know whats in their code for the most part, and second, that you disregard the IP rights of authors at your own peril. Jeff points out that finding issues like this is really not that difficult.

OSS Patents

This is a big step. The running debate about software patents just got a little less strident, thanks to the actions of IBM, Novell, Redhat, Sony and Philips. These companies announced their intent to acquire patents and make them available to OSS developers. Lots of questions about how - but the intent is a good one: respect the rights of IP owners, but take steps for broader use

Hal on OSS

Hal Stern is one of the best thinkers at Sun...so when he comments on open source, its worth a listen

Insurance?

There is an interesting direction underway, as exemplified by the OSRM announcement yesterday regarding open source insurance. This article has more information, but the net is that users of open source software can now purchase insurance which will pay them for costs incurred when they are inadvertantly out of compliance with open source licensing terms. In other words, if you get a notification that you are improperly using open source code, this insurance would, among other things, pay you to take the engineering steps required to bring your usage into compliance.

I'll confess that my personal view has been that this is a corner case situation at best, but there are a few other data points that are making me rethink. For example I was talking with an industry analyst yesterday who remarked on the number of calls he is getting from enterprise customers wanting to discuss risk, and indemnification. He actually used the analogy to the old west - as the boundaries of civilization gradually expanded, the culture changed. Maybe this is inevitable. I'm firmly convinced that the open source model will change (has changed) the software industry. But in the process there will undoubtedly be some changes to the culture of the open source world as well. Whatever those changes are will be good news to some, and bad news to others.