Open Source on the Verizon

Traditional software owners can have some difficulty with open source software. Most traditional software proprietors spend vast sums of money creating, developing, testing, upgrading and supporting software for their clients. They then, quite rightly, charge their clients for the software and services which their investment has created. As far as a traditional software proprietor understands the world: I programme it, I sell it.

This is a gross over-simplification, but you get the idea. You can also probably understand why traditional software proprietors struggle with the concept of open source. As far as they (and frequently the public at large) can tell, open source is free; and not just free in terms of "no money" but free in terms of "free to use". It isn't - it's subject to licence terms in the same way as proprietary software, and increasingly the open source community is getting this message across through organisations such as the Software Freedom Law Centre.

Founded in 2005 this body provides 'legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance free and open source software'. It takes this role quite seriously, and has been issuing lawsuits to enforce open source licence terms. In 2007 they issued a lawsuit against Verizon for not supplying source code to an open source component with their technology (a wireless router) in breach of the relevant open source licence terms. It is reported that Verizon have settled the lawsuit, as of March 2008. Whilst the choice to settle could have been made for any number of reasons, Verizon clearly took this lawsuit seriously in choosing to settle.

Given the number of times I've been asked about this recently, it is clear that traditional software proprietors are starting to take the issues of open source more and more seriously. This also seems to have come at a time when the open source movement itself has started to take the policing of open source more seriously. Nothing raises public (and commercial) consciences as much as a very public lawsuit.