IT Manager’s Journal: Sarbanes-Oxley May Up the Ante for GPL Violations

“What happens if you violate the GNU General Public License
(GPL)? Historically, you’d earn the scorn of the Free Software
Foundation (FSF) and the open source community, and you might have
to disclose or rewrite some code. However, the intellectual
property disclosure requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
may present an additional threat to companies that violate the
GPL.

“‘If you don’t comply with the license, you have no right to use
the software. If you’re saying to shareholders you do, that is a
misrepresentation,’ explains Jay Michaelson, general counsel for
embedded systems seller Wasabi Systems. Wasabi itself uses GPLed
code, Michaelson says, and about half of the company’s revenue
comes from its embedded BSD products…”

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