It would be great to get a glimpse of how Enterprises (especially their legal counsel) view open-source licenses, are there particular ones they prefer and ones they will likely look to stay away from?
Unfortunately some legal counsel are still not very knowledgeable about open source, and they consider it a big scary problem. People always fear what they don't understand. (I feel this way about the areas of law I don't know, too.) When it comes to using OSS of others, counsel will be concerned about copyleft licenses like Affero GPL or even GPL. And yet, often, using code under these licenses is not a problem -- you just need to have a compliance process in place, and to understand your use case. Over the years, legal counsel have learned more about OSS, and it's now part of the toolkit of most tech lawyers. But sometimes, we need to do a little education to make them comfortable. I find that it's usually possible to address OSS concerns, and when it's not, it's because of an unwillingness of counsel to learn.
Thanks for the question!
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
A community for COSS builders, founders, consumers, investors, and fans.
Hi Heather,
It would be great to get a glimpse of how Enterprises (especially their legal counsel) view open-source licenses, are there particular ones they prefer and ones they will likely look to stay away from?
Unfortunately some legal counsel are still not very knowledgeable about open source, and they consider it a big scary problem. People always fear what they don't understand. (I feel this way about the areas of law I don't know, too.) When it comes to using OSS of others, counsel will be concerned about copyleft licenses like Affero GPL or even GPL. And yet, often, using code under these licenses is not a problem -- you just need to have a compliance process in place, and to understand your use case. Over the years, legal counsel have learned more about OSS, and it's now part of the toolkit of most tech lawyers. But sometimes, we need to do a little education to make them comfortable. I find that it's usually possible to address OSS concerns, and when it's not, it's because of an unwillingness of counsel to learn.
Thanks for the question!