Raise your hand if you’ve ever been involved in a contentious intellectual property dispute. (Ok, put your hand down, this is a blog, and I can’t see you.) I asked a room full of developers this question last year, and I saw that about 5-10% of the people in the room raised a hand. My next question was, “Ok, those of you who raised your hand, keep them raised if you enjoyed the experience.” Of course, this question was a setup, no one’s hand was in the air. These developers and I share an experience — we’ve had to go through the arduous task of dissecting years of commit history and IP clearance to support litigation. This experience is becoming more and more common (and complex) as many companies start to use open source software without understanding the ramifications of certain licenses.
As someone who has been through the process of supporting litigation I want to share my experience so that you understand what could happen when your organization incorporates OSS components under the wrong license or deals with code of questionable provenance. I’m writing this blog entry to convey the experience of being a developer who has to support litigation – it isn’t fun or productive, and it usually something that is completely avoidable.
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