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

I don't get it

[noz]

Are they worried because they've used GPL licensed code in their products?

Re:I don't get it

[davester666]

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.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are worried that if governments begin using "infected"[*] open source products, they [McAfee] might be forced to support those open source products. And they are afraid that their code will be contaminated by the GPL *license* (note: not code).

Let me put it another way..
1. You create a program for counting beans, it's written for Microsoft Windows
2. 40% of your important customers (government) switches to Linux
3. Because you want to keep you clients, you port your application to Linux.
In order to get access to the proper low-level interfaces (that you imagine you need for your bean counter), you start writing some kernel support functions.
4. You deliever your application to your government. You are happy, the government is happy.
5. One day, someone posts a "Company X are in violation of the GPL!" to Slashdot -- and all hell breaks loose. Your lawers tell you that "Yes, we have to open source all our products, because they have all been contaminated by the GPL, becase we touched the linux kernel source (which is GPL)!".
6. You shut down your business, and live on welfare for the rest of your life.

The only thing which has happened here is that McAfee has proclaimed that GPL is viral (it infects innocent suspects' code).

I suspect that McAfee has been offered a Great Deal by someone, in exchange for publicly stating that the GPL is viral.

And no, I don't believe they are using GPL code. That's not what this is about. They are afraid of their (important) customers demanding McAfee support GPL products.

Re:Since when do software licenses...

[sinthetek]

Sounds to me like that is just an excuse; I think it is fairly likely they are just trying to stir up trouble for FOSS community with SEC. They have a lot at stake if you think about it. AV companies' prime source of revenue is MS and it's adoption is declining while *nix -based systems' are increasing. They have little experience with *nix software probably and know most people won't see much need for a *nix AV solution and there are several to compete with already.

I could be wrong but seems like this and similar complaints about FOSS are from entities with self-serving interests rather than interests of society/world at large. A lot of it is just FUD hoping to encourage paranoia in businesses and slow FOSS adoption