[Sussex] So... GPL v3, eh?

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

Tim Smith wrote:
> Hi all
> Not strictly speaking related to GPL3 but still an interesting comment 
> someone made to me today about OpenSource in general. He is the MD of 
> a company who has just been acquired by another (synergies of 
> codebases, filling gaps, etc). Before the purchase they were working 
> on an opensource version of their software. He did say that some 
> aspects were not open but the majority was.
> He saw it as very valuable insurance policy in case the new parent 
> company decided to drop their software; they could just go and work on 
> the OpenSource version instead. It seems the experience of Freehand 
> developers when Adobe dropped that software had made him a little 
> worried.
> Hope that's not too off topic. Oh, I've not mentioned names bec I'm 
> not sure how I stand on discussing work interviews when they're not 
> actually published as news.
> Kind regards
> Tim
>
It's on topic. This sort of legacy support or using abandonware becomes 
impossible in the US, when software patents are in play. (I worked for 
Mitsubishi Electric's lab that owned a stack of the MPEG patents, so 
kept an eye on this sort of thing.) The software patent issue is a big 
one for the medical research world and historians, where records are 
often in weird proprietary formats.