Liability and Indemnification
Mitigate risks associated with liability and lack of indemnification.
The lack of understanding surrounding open source licensing issues and indemnification provides an additional risk when using open source. A proprietary vendor — owning full control of the copyright and code of its product — can provide complete indemnification. An open source vendor may have its hands tied, since there are multiple contributors as well as third-party modules and licenses involved. To solve this problem, open source providers have come up with creative licensing and indemnification solutions to appropriately mitigate the risks to their users and provide users with clear background information on these issues. Knowing the risks upfront can help enterprise IT assess and understand the impact on their businesses.
5 Ways to Solve the Open Source Industry's Biggest Problems
5 Ways to Solve the Open Source Industry's Biggest Problems
Over the last decade, open source software and its audience of end users have greatly matured. Once only used by a small subset of tech-savvy early adopters, the convenience, effectiveness and cost savings of open source solutions are now driving enterprise IT to explore more ways to take advantage of the power of open source in their daily business operations.
In today's economy, enterprise IT has less to gain from developing and licensing software and more to gain from actively working with existing open source technology. However, the march toward open source still faces major obstacles before it becomes mainstream. In this slideshow, Travis Oliphant, CEO and founder of Continuum Analytics, outlines five challenges preventing enterprise IT from shifting to open source and tips for tackling them to keep the future of open source heading in the right direction. The road may be winding, but it will eventually lead companies to open source to help them innovate and as the way of the future.
