I recently ran across an application which one of our customers was thinking about implementing. Now I know this customer well and they are adamant about not pushing out open source to their network. So this so called “commercial” application had a demo which I watched.

Darn did it look familiar… So I dug a little deeper. Come to find out they had taken and re-used open source from another application for a particular feature.

Using open source is becoming more prevelant in our industry, and as a result you really need to be careful of the products you use. Ask your vendor for position statements regarding their use of open source. Make sure you understand the GPL/LGPL that is relevant.

The last thing you want is an issue where someone comes back at you for liability due to intellectual property.

So watch out!