Commercial disputes to rise with open-source software development?

Published on 9 Aug 2010 under category: legal

Firms could enter into more commercial disputes as open source software development becomes more common.
New research from Accenture has revealed that more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of 300 companies in the United Kingdom, US and Ireland plan to invest more into development this year.
In addition, more than a third (38 per cent) said they will move from existing hardware use to open source software for "mission critical" functions.
However, only 29 per cent were keen to share innovations in the open-source community.
There has been a rise in the number of commercial disputes over licence terms in open source software.
As uptake has increased, more firms have been found to have used the software without making the original code publicly available – which is a key tenet of open-source use.

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