'Infectious' Open Source Software?

Gavo writes "Law firm Chapmann Tripp advises New Zealand State Services Commission that the New Zealand Government should be wary of using 'infectious' open source software. They claim 'While the use of open source software has many benefits, it brings with it a number of legal risks not posed by proprietary or commercial software.'"

Between The Lines

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

"We've noticed a substantial drop in the amount of EULA's being drafted, as well as an air of goodwill and cheer creeping into the normally sour and beligerent computer software industry, leading naturally to a decrease in important economy stimulating litigation.

Time to break out the FUD cakes!"

Recommended Daily Allowance of FUD

[Antique Geekmeister]

The entire slant of the document is incorrect. There are certainly concerns with the open source licenses, especially for someone unfamiliar with them who is used to using proprietary software, tweaking it, and reselling without every publishing the modifications to their clients or to the authors.

But the use of closed source and proprietary software has a generally greater risk due to risk of copyright violation and patent violation and user agreement violation. Simply reverse-engineering a proprietary protocol in order to get your work done or to fix a serious issue in closed source software can cause serious legal problems which are often far greater, even though they are more familiar. And the closed source tools are far more likely to contain backdoors or to have vital features discarded in new revisions, forcing a painful and expensive upgrade process for both software and its configurations to the new setups, or to simply be discarded and the data or tools permanently lost to users.

The shutdown of companies or their abandonment of products is a real problem in the closed source world.

Sigh. Another one.

[jimicus]

It's not FUD, it is simply "OSS for the uninitiated - be warned that if you're developing software, you might want to actually read the license of anything else you or your contractors plan to use rather than just ignoring it like you usually do". The general tone is "You can use OSS, but be careful".

It's not terribly well written, mainly because it seems to add a load of guff to licenses which are by and large pretty easy to read. And it uses some contentious terminology which is likely to cause concern. ("Infectious", anyone?)

Doubtless a whole boatload of slashbots who didn't RTFA will be a long in a moment to say "yeah but no but it's microsoft FUD ignore it don't give it publicity etc etc" - I'm not going to debate that one. I actually think it's more likely to be an attempt on the part of the law firm to drum up a bit of business. Something along the lines of "Now you've read this article, contact us for further advice!"

Re:and GPL v3 makes this problem worse

[meringuoid]

For companies that do not want their source code plastered all over the internet, avoiding GPL'd software just makes good sense.

Ehh... sort of. You can still use open-source software: you can develop in emacs on GNU/Linux and write up all the documentation using LyX or OpenOffice or whatever. As long as your product is all your own work that's fine. It's when you start shipping, say... an Integrated Firewall Solution that happens to run on a modified Linux kernel that you might run into GPL issues.

That's the quarrel we generally have with this kind of article: it can confuse the issue between use of GPL software - which you can do freely, even if you don't accept the terms of the GPL itself - and redistribution of GPL software or derived works, which is just plain illegal under standard copyright law unless you do so under the terms of the GPL.

Re:Not really

[DavidTC]

If you use Open Source software as part of your own products

Whereas, of course, you can legally use closed source a part of your own products all you want.

The #1 reason why articles like this are BS...

[frankie]

Yes, if you paste OSS code into your software project, you will need to follow their license. As opposed to copying proprietary source code ... which will merely LAND YOU IN COURT for piracy, hacking &/or theft of trade secrets. See, isn't that a much better option?

Re:RTF Document

[bani]

I mean, I realize that the words "infectious" has negative connotations, but I just don't see this document in and of itself as a bad thing.

You might think that, with your head screwed on properly. However the pointy hairs who read this document are going to go apeshit when they read the emotional words "infectious" and "quarantine".

This document is written for pointy hairs, not engineers. It's designed to scare them into submission, make them freak out and think that open source is going to steal all their company patents, intellectual propery, their baby, and kick their dog too.