McAfee Worried Over "Ambiguous" Open Source Licenses

willdavid writes to tell us InformationWeek is reporting that McAfee, in their annual report, has warned investors that "ambiguous" open source licenses "may result in unanticipated obligations regarding [McAfee] products." "McAfee said it's particularly troubling that the legality of terms included in the GNU/General Public License -- the most widely used open source license -- have yet to be tested in court. 'Use of GPL software could subject certain portions of our proprietary software to the GPL requirements, which may have adverse effects on our sales of the products incorporating any such software,' McAfee said in the report filed last month with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among other things, the GPL requires that manufacturers who in their products use software governed by the license distribute the software's source code to end users or customers. Some manufacturers have voiced concerns that the requirement could leave important security or copyright protection features in their products open to tampering."

Comments

What's the problem?

[zebslash]

Don't want to be bound to the terms of the GPL? Don't use GPL code!
Just another piece of FUD.

just lazy companies.

[bark]

there is no free lunch. these manufacturers are seeing the "gold mine" open source software as a way to do less work. Well, you've got to comply with the terms of the license if you distribute it. no 2 ways about it.

Re:I don't get it

[Broken Toys]

"McAfee's warning may have been prompted by the fact the Software Freedom Law Center, an open source advocacy group, recently filed a series of lawsuits against alleged GPL violators."

The article isn't very clear on this point but it sounds like McAfee is almost admitting they violated the GPL and are about to end up in court.

Re:I don't get it

[unlametheweak]

Yes. And to correct the article, they aren't really worried about having to release code may "leave ... products open to tampering", but rather, people might find blatantly obvious bugs or omissions with how they "protect" your computer. And then profit from it, either by writing rootkits or whatever that bypass their "protection" or by sueing them when they are infected by these rootkits. I would suspect that it would be easier to run automated programs for finding buffer over-runs, etc, rather than phishing through thousands of lines of code looking for a non-obvious vulnerability (anybody who has ever coded knows that ALL coding mistakes are non-obvious... as soon as they press the compile button :P).

By their logic it would be trivial to hack into a Linux computer because it is open-source, and next to impossible to hack into a Microsoft computer.

Re:I don't get it

[HangingChad]

Do their own graft, write their own damn software, and stop freeloading off the community.

What kind of leftie, tree-hugging nonsense is that? Expecting corporations to accept responsibility when there is shareholder value to consider, quarterly numbers to make and fat bonuses to earn.

Accountability...I can't believe such a radical concept will ever fly. The American corporate way is to have our cake, eat it too and expense the bill as entertainment.