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Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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McAfee and open source licenses

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McAfee seem to have trouble understanding the basis of open source licenses. Perhaps they need management with a more informed and enlightened view ?
Open source is in essence talented people are giving away the fruits of their labor for free, you can typically utilize the software as you see fit, on as many machines as you like, for free. Naturally there is no warranty since you have not paid for it. You are free to buy support from any organization or individual you see fit.

The requirement to redistribute source code implies only that you do not take other peoples work, compile it, hide the source and represent it as your own work or product. Perfectly sensible and reasonable to any right minded person.

What is far less reasonable are the restrictive terms of many EULAs spell out in the small print. These can include such generic all encompassing clauses such as not allowing you to "work around any limitation in the software"

Wider understanding of open source licenses such as the GPL can only be a good thing, please do try to have articles that promote this rather than fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).

IT manager

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