The non-profit Linux Foundation has launched a new, largely free, assistance program – the Open Compliance Program - that is worth examining by those organizations which, though interested in using open source in their own products, may be somewhat wary of intellectual property issues.According to the information forwarded by the foundation, the key components of the Open Compliance Program include an assessment checklist, training programs, as well as software tools for monitoring open source software usage.
In addition, the program also includes a community workgroup, a compliance directory of companies that use open source software, and a new Software Package Data Exchange standard that help create a packing list of all supporting software components of an application.
Noting that software development usually involves use of multiple programs, most of them open source, in a single stack, particularly in the fact-paced mobile device and consumer electronics scenario, The Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin said: “You have a really complicated supply chain, where you might get source code coming from lots of different places, whether it is a chipset vendor, a mobile handset provider or embedded software vendor. Managing open source license compliance is complicated.”
Further adding that most companies lack the requisite knowledge about how different software licensing works with open source, Zemlin said that the wide array of tools and services comprising the Open Compliance Program help to get companies up to speed.
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