Note that Sanford ("Sandy") Litvack, now 72 years old, was an Assistant Attorney General for the Carter administration, where he headed the DoJ Antitrust Division. His first job after law school was as a trial attorney for the DoJ Antitrust Division in the Eisenhower administration.
This will be his second return from private practice to assist the DoJ.
The IBM contract issue isn't cut and dried to be sure, but I'm much more concerned with SCO's strategy of attacking the GPL.
If they are successful, the repercussions would be quite horrible... SCO will have done a huge amount of damage to the intellectual property status of open source software, all to make a few hundred million dollars. It seems like a lot of money for SCO, but it's almost nothing against the value of what they might destroy.
There's a very funny Flash cartoon illustrative of this point at justinshearer.com.
I've been part of deals like this several times. It is extremely common for small dev shops to provide source to large customers who want to retain the right to continue to use and modify the code and who have no particular confidence in the longevity of your business.
The issue isn't really "open source," it's the terms of the software license for your product. Your contract should make it clear that your company owns the code, but that in consideration of the money in the development contract, you're granting a limited license for use and modification of the code to your customer.
An alternate strategy that may work for other contract situations where your customer wants the reassurance of owning code and where you have strong concerns about revealing source code is a software escrow agreement. For a relatively small fee (usually the customer's responsibility), your source code is held by a bonded intermediary suce as Datasafe, Inc. . It's your responsibility to update the code for each new release. Contractually, you guarantee your customer that if you ever cease operations, they can pull the source code out of escrow, mitigating their risk in contracting with you.
The next thing you should do, though, is get the right lawyer to assist you in preparing a strong contract that protects your company from adverse developments. Contract preparation and review services are generally way less expensive than the risk you undertake when you don't use them. If up-front cash flow is a problem, explain the situation and see if you can pay out of your first milestone check... some lawyers will give a break in order to cultivate a relationship with a promising young software development company.
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Note that Sanford ("Sandy") Litvack, now 72 years old, was an Assistant Attorney General for the Carter administration, where he headed the DoJ Antitrust Division. His first job after law school was as a trial attorney for the DoJ Antitrust Division in the Eisenhower administration. This will be his second return from private practice to assist the DoJ.
The IBM contract issue isn't cut and dried to be sure, but I'm much more concerned with SCO's strategy of attacking the GPL.
If they are successful, the repercussions would be quite horrible... SCO will have done a huge amount of damage to the intellectual property status of open source software, all to make a few hundred million dollars. It seems like a lot of money for SCO, but it's almost nothing against the value of what they might destroy.
There's a very funny Flash cartoon illustrative of this point at justinshearer.com.
I've been part of deals like this several times. It is extremely common for small dev shops to provide source to large customers who want to retain the right to continue to use and modify the code and who have no particular confidence in the longevity of your business.
The issue isn't really "open source," it's the terms of the software license for your product. Your contract should make it clear that your company owns the code, but that in consideration of the money in the development contract, you're granting a limited license for use and modification of the code to your customer.
An alternate strategy that may work for other contract situations where your customer wants the reassurance of owning code and where you have strong concerns about revealing source code is a software escrow agreement. For a relatively small fee (usually the customer's responsibility), your source code is held by a bonded intermediary suce as Datasafe, Inc. . It's your responsibility to update the code for each new release. Contractually, you guarantee your customer that if you ever cease operations, they can pull the source code out of escrow, mitigating their risk in contracting with you.
The next thing you should do, though, is get the right lawyer to assist you in preparing a strong contract that protects your company from adverse developments. Contract preparation and review services are generally way less expensive than the risk you undertake when you don't use them. If up-front cash flow is a problem, explain the situation and see if you can pay out of your first milestone check... some lawyers will give a break in order to cultivate a relationship with a promising young software development company.