February 2008
Intermediate to advanced
285 pages
7h 6m
English
book
The Open Source Alternative: Understanding Risks and Leveraging Opportunities
by Heather J. Meeker
Content preview from The Open Source Alternative: Understanding Risks and Leveraging OpportunitiesBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 4. Due Diligence, License Proliferation, and Compatibility
Today's software development takes place overwhelmingly in a heterogeneous landscape. Most software code bases today include all kinds of software—open source software, free software, and proprietary software—or any other categories of license one cares to name.
What is the Problem with Combining Software?
Putting different kinds of software together is like holding a dinner party for my relatives. Maybe, if I go to a lot of work, I can serve food everyone will eat: My middle-age uncle on his low-carb diet wants meat and fish; my sister the vegan wants only locally grown vegetables; and my teenage nephew will eat anything as long as it comes from McDonald's. But what if all the dinner guests have not only their own preferences, but a vehement, polemical disgust for the foods the others eat? It is hard to bring everyone to the same table. That is what the software world can be like today.
Like many problems in the world, the difficulty in the software world comes not from the participants being different but from participants being unable to coexist with the others. Software licenses, like people who are certain that they are right, place restrictions on the others with whom they coexist. With enough restrictions, and when those restrictions are mutually exclusive, coexistence is difficult or impossible.
Avoiding this incompatibility in the software world can be a difficult job. Developers using software in a code base ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.