Financial Times: Free Programs with Strings Attached

“More than half the world’s websites now run on the Apache web
server and 57 per cent of companies polled by IDC, the research
company, used Linux to run a big application within their
enterprise.

“The popular view is that there are few restrictions on how open
software can be used. But, like proprietary software, it is
distributed with a copyright licence. While this may simply require
anyone redistributing the software to acknow-ledge the original
author, the most commonly used licence, the GNU General Public
Licence or GPL, is significantly restrictive.

“Some software industry experts believe that by integrating open
source software into their infrastructure, companies are wandering
into a legal minefield…”

Complete Story