Open source steering committee vital

Companies using open source components must build a strategy to deal with potential risks around licensing and intellectual property involved with the software.

Developers are increasingly using open source projects in their work, because the software can be high quality and low cost.

But analyst Forrester warned that many companies do not have an open source policy in place and are failing to address areas such as liability, risk and overall strategy.

Speaking at the Forrester Gigaworld conference in Barcelona, Forrester vice president John Rymer told vnunet.com: "This is a brand new technology coming out of the woodwork.

"There are enough risks and enough issues that you have to make it an explicit strategy with a team."

Rymer maintained that there are a set of risks around intellectual property in open source which have become more visible since the SCO Group case, and which could be repeated.

"How are you going to ensure that the title is clear if you are going to make it a part of the architecture? We are saying that it is a solvable problem but you have to focus on it," he said.

Companies need to investigate the open source elements they are using, and involve lawyers to make sure that the company is covered legally.

Businesses should also investigate the roadmap for open source projects to ensure continued investment, according to Rymer.

Users should create an open source steering committee, including business users, to make sure that everyone involved has the latest information on areas such as software roadmaps, licensing and security.

But Rymer also predicted that large vendors will start offering bundles of open source software where this sort of due diligence has already been carried out.

As well as Linux and Apache, companies are increasingly investigating open source technologies such as MySQL, JBOS and Tomcat, the analyst said.