February 2008
Intermediate to advanced
285 pages
7h 6m
English
book
The Open Source Alternative: Understanding Risks and Leveraging Opportunities
by Heather J. Meeker
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Chapter 17. Open Source in Mergers and Acquisitions and Other Transactions[286]
The treatment of open source in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and other transactions has grown with the popularity of open source and with the adoption of open source by commercial technology developers. When open source was relatively unknown and considered within the purview of hobbyists, most agreements relating to technology licensing or development sought primarily to exclude open source. However, as open source has become more popular, and particularly more popular in commercial technology development, the treatment of open source in commercial agreements and mergers and acquisitions has necessarily become more sophisticated.
In the 1990s, when contracts relating to routine technology development and licensing generally contained nothing about open source, representations like the following were common in a merger, acquisition, or investment agreement:
The Company Intellectual Property[287] contains no software source code that is covered by a so-called "open source" license. For purposes of this paragraph, "open source" is any software that is made generally publicly available in source code form.
This kind of representation demonstrates a few of the problems that arose in negotiating agreements when awareness of open source was minimal. For instance, the definition of open source in the language above is too broad. Many kinds of software are, of course, available in source code form regardless ...
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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.