McAfee has warned investors that the "ambiguous" nature of open source
licensing could turn into a business threat.
In a recent filing with the US
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) McAfee
repeatedly warned of possible dangers to the company's intellectual property
regime presented by open source. The warnings come as several large companies
face legal action over their use of software protected by the open source General
Public License (GPL), the most widely used open source licence.
"To the extent we utilize 'open source' software we face risks,"
McAfee said in its 10-K annual report, filed at the end of December.
The company said its ability to commercialize products could be harmed because
of "ambiguous" open source licence terms that could result in "unanticipated
or uncertain obligations regarding our products."
Furthermore, it could be difficult to determine whether open source software
infringes on third-party intellectual property rights, McAfee said.
The GPL is of particular concern, according to McAfee, since its scope and
requirements "have not been interpreted in a court of law" and use
of GPL-covered software "could subject certain portions of our proprietary
software to the GPL requirements."
The GPL requires derived works to be covered under the GPL's own "copyleft"
terms, which include a requirement to provide users with software source code
and with the right to themselves modify and redistribute the software.
The GPL is currently facing several tests in court. Last month the Software
Freedom Law Center (SFLC) filed a copyright lawsuit against Verizon
Communications, alleging that routers the company uses with its Fios broadband
service violate the GPL.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the developers of BusyBox,
a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems.
The SFLC has previously filed copyright lawsuits on behalf of the developers
against three other companies, but Verizon is by far the largest target.
Last summer Skype
was found guilty of violating the GPL by a Munich, Germany regional court. The
decision found that Skype had violated the GPL by the way it distributed a voice
over IP (VoIP) handset, the SMCWSKP100, which incorporates the GPL-covered Linux
kernel in its firmware.
Also last summer the Free Software
Foundation (FSF) released the GPL version 3, including changes connected
to intellectual property rights.
