Liability and Control Risks with Open Source Software

An exploratory investigation was conducted on the liability and control risks posed to U.S. organizations by the adoption of OSS. Three primary risks associated with the use of OSS were identified: upstream intellectual property concerns, viral software issues, and non-infringement warranties or intellectual property (IP) indemnity issues. In the context of a field investigation of these risks, several potential scenarios of OSS risk to organizations were identified, with two of them appearing as primary. The first primary scenario is the potential loss of control over revenue generating proprietary software when OSS source code and proprietary software source code are mixed together in one primary software works. The second primary risk scenario is the potential loss of control over software products or services offered within an organization due to legal disputes about intellectual property (IP). Other secondary risk scenarios are discussed as well. Some emerging trends in this area are also reviewed.