Open Source Software Licensing for IT Managers

Blogger: Larry Cannell

A recent article from Bruce Perens, a leading open source advocate, entitled “How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need?” reminded me of how confusing open source licensing can be for IT managers who aren’t plugged into the open source world. Although the article is published on a website intended to be read by IT managers it was clearly written for companies producing open source software. After writing down some of my own ideas for explaining open source licenses to IT managers I decided to turn these into a series of posts.

But first, some background. My research focuses on the use of communication, collaboration, and content management (3C) solutions within large enterprises. What this means is I don’t come to this topic from only a developer’s or a system or network administrator’s perspective. The 3C solutions we cover are usually considered infrastructure components that can be leveraged by applications. We tend to have a foot in both the infrastructure and application side of IT.

What we see driving IT management interest in open source is:

1. Saving money through lower licensing costs.
2. A desire to tap into innovative solutions, particularly those driven by active open source communities.
3. Using open source software to learn about emerging technologies (for example, much of what is called Web 2.0 was first built with open source)

The concerns IT managers have with open source software are:

• How well does the software work?
• Will it integrate with my existing infrastructure and applications?
• How well is it supported?
• Is it secure?
• Are there any risks with using open source software?

In my client dialogues about open source a topic that often drives discussion is licensing. One of the keys to effectively applying open source solutions is to understand a vendor’s business model and the role the software plays in their market plans. An open source license supports that role and business model. Therefore, understanding open source licenses is important because:

• They are an indication of the business model used by an open source company (and commercial software and services companies using open source software).
• Each of these business models has a different set of factors to pay attention to in terms of how they use open source and what they must do to succeed.
• They also influence how an enterprise might use an open source product. For example, maybe you are using an open source library in one of your applications or perhaps you are using a full product (like an open source blog) but are thinking of integrating it with an application. Each of these scenarios comes with a different set of opportunities and risk.

My next post will be an introduction to specific open source licenses, the levers they can bring to bear on a software market, and what they can mean to an enterprise using open source software.

Comments

[rpetersen]

Glad to see you covering this topic! It will take a long time for the distinctions among the various open source licenses to become mainstream knowledge, not to mention the implications for businesses using, incorporating or redistributing open source code. Please don't neglect to address the complementary considerations of copyright ownership and community governance, which determine (respectively) who has the right to change an open source license and how effectively the developer community enables participation and contribution while ensuring contributed code doesn't infringe on others' copyrights.