Submitting Corporate IP to Open Source Projects?

Posted by Cliff on Monday April 22, 2002 @03:50AM from the returning-something-to-the-community dept.

dannyp asks: "Does anyone have advice and/or references for working with a (very large and cautious) corporate legal department to establish a policy for submitting company-developed patches back to Open Source projects? I work at a large company outside of the technology sector (financial services). As we've succeeded in getting Open Source packages approved for use within the company, we're trying to figure out how to submit patches back to the community. We have to convince management that it makes sense to give this Intellectual Property away, and then (more difficult) convince Legal that we aren't going to get sued for doing it. Any advice?"

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Re:If it is GPL'd software... by ivan256 · 2002-04-22 04:06 · Score: 4, Informative

If it is GPL'd software then point out to them that they could be sued if they do not release the patches.

That's completely untrue. You can use patches to GPL'd software internaly to an organization or personally without releasing code. You only need to release code if you plan on distributing the modified version.

Go read section 2 of the GPL carefully.