[OSGeo-Discuss] An interesting article about software licensing in the non-open source geospatial world

[Frank Warmerdam]

Schlagel, Joel D. IWR wrote:
> 
> http://www.thestreet.com/story/10640248/1/tech-rights-give-companies-upper-h
> and.html

Joel,

A lot of this article seems to be a contract dispute rather than a software
licensing dispute.  An interesting point is that if Netezza had secured
the software from Intelligent Integration Systems under an open source
license, they would have been able to port it to their new architecture
on their own.

Sometimes I hear folks complain about vague risks of using FOSS.  What is
amazing is how billion dollar organizations will put themselves in great
strategic jeopardy through dependencies on other organizations with only
unclear and uncertain contracts and some hope for goodwill to protect
themselves.

Building on software distributed under well understood and relatively
unrestrictive open source licenses can help a great deal.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent