IT Manager’s Journal: Fear and Loathing in Source Code Licensing

“Can established enterprise software vendors match the
flexibility of open-source applications? Their customers want the
ability to easily fix, integrate, and enhance applications. In many
cases, everybody benefits from source code licensing. However, if
you ask for source code from a vendor that doesn’t normally
distribute it, you often get an instinctive answer of ‘we can’t do
that.’ You see fear, even paranoia. What are the sources of this
fear that is preventing wider source code licensing and
collaboration?

“When faced with the opportunity to license source code, a
software vendor needs to do an unemotional analysis of the actual
risks involved and the actual economic cost of those risks compared
with the benefits of a new licensing model…”

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