Open Source Blog

As noted in this news story, Palamida was one of a handful of intellectual property management vendors that sprung up in the light of Unix vendor SCO Group’s controversial 2003 claims that Linux contained elements of its Unix System V code.

According to Tolliver, the concern now is not what code might have made its way into open source projects, as it is what open source code might have found its way into internal development projects.

The suggestion is not necessarily that code is being misappropriated, he added, but that open source code provides a cost-effective basis for internal development, and sooner or later compliance requirements might call on businesses to account for it.

As concerns over SCO’s claims have diminished, Palamida’s user base is slowly changing:

“Compliance still makes up the starting point and will remain so for some time to come but people’s definition of compliance is now expanding to ‘what can you tell me about the software’. Software vendors remain the most obvious customer set, and it’s where we’ve done most of our business to date. Now there’s more interest from software users, particularly those with a high level of IT governance.”

Bringing more open source code into a business is not an intellectually property risk as long as you have the tools in place to manage that and make sure that you are playing by the rules. In this regard, the compliance requirement could be considered the open source equivalent of the proprietary software audit. The only difference is, it’s on your own terms.

For more on the total innovation opportunity of open source see also:
The innovation opportunity of open source
Putting a value on the total innovation opportunity of open source
EnterpriseDB – the open source total innovation opportunity in action
Unisys aims to ride the wave of open source TIO
Open source TCO and the total innovation opportunity
TCO versus TIO: a simple diagram
Ingres’s Roger Burkhardt on the innovation opportunity of open source