It�s Not That Complicated

"We seem to be seeing a rise again in the discussions surrounding free and open source software licensing complexity, and the fear that open source may infect or taint your software. Glyn Moody wrote about the recent BlackDuck white paper on Android. (The BlackDuck white paper wanted its readers to appreciate the complexity so much they re-used the "185 components covered by 19 licenses" numbers three times.) The recent court discussion of the GPL-violation suit against Westinghouse adds fuel to the fire. Just yesterday I received email from a marketing department of yet another company with source scanning tools that ensure against open source "contamination" and "unclean IP".

"Let's get a few things out of the way. This is not an open source problem. If you program in C++ and have third-party ISV library code available, then someone could inadvertently copy source code. Or remove a copyright notice. Or maybe developers in your shop (including yourself) regularly pull example code from public example websites..."

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