International Herald Tribune on open source dangers
International Hearld Tribune tells companies to look out for open source in their closed source products. If one’s busted with violating the terms of GPL, the company could be forced to open up the codebase for the product. The news might also attract some litigation vultures, who might claim you’re using their property. How widespread is the practice?
Software developers working on “value-added” applications routinely borrow pieces of open-source code as building blocks for such functions as encryption, security or platform interfacing. Offshore programmers for American companies have become especially adept at grabbing lines of open-source code and mixing them with proprietary code in progress.