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Just a reminder, these posts are not legal advice. This site is the personal blog of Mark Radcliffe and the opinions expressed are those of Mark Radcliffe and not those of his clients, DLA Piper or the clients of DLA Piper.

About Me:

Mark Radcliffe

I have been practicing law in Silicon Valley for over thirty years assisting startups and global companies develop and market innovative products and services. I have participated in multiple business cyles in Silicon Valley from hardware to software to internet to cloud. My projects have included developing the dual licensing business model for open source startup, developing the original domain dispute resolution policy for NSI and assisting Sun in open sourcing the Solaris operating system. Recently, I served on the US Japan Innovation and Entrepreneurship Council (one of ten members) to develop a plan to encourage the innovation in Japan and the United States. I have been working with the same attorneys since 1986 although we have merged with other law firms several times. I am now a partner at DLA Piper, a (relatively) new global law firm formed in 2005 from the merger of three law firms. The firm now has 4200 lawyers in 31 countries and 77 cities. My experience in corporate securities (particularly venture capital) and intellectual property enables me to assist companies structure the financing and intellectual property strategy for developing ane exploiting a new product or service. I and my team work with fifty startups at one time as well as Global Fortune 100. I have been fortunate enough to work with companies in software, cloud computing, semiconductor, health care IT and Web 2.0.

Harvard Business Review: FOSS Has Reached Tipping Point

06/04/11

Recently Laurie Wurster of Gartner wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review which confirms that the free and open source software (“FOSS”) has reached a “tipping point” in adoption by companies which confirms a trend she noted in her 2008 report (Accenture and IDG have reached similar conclusions). http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/open_source_software_hits_a_st.html

Yet she notes that this increase in adoption has not been matched by implementing processes to manage such use. She raised the same issue in her 2008 report. http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=107. In the Harvard Business Review in March 2011, she states: 

Even as our survey painted a rosy picture of the future of enterprise use of open source software, it also surfaced a concern. Most organizations, it revealed, have not established a policy framework to guide decision-making on the use of open source software. A proper framework would outline types of licenses acceptable to the organization, guidelines pertaining to intellectual property, regulations governing contributions to external projects, and an approved vendor/project list. Just a third of respondents claimed their organizations have anything like this kind of policy structure; the rest rely on ad hoc or informal processes

In fact, this problem is sufficiently important that we are having a specific breakout session on FOSS management at the Open Source Think Tank this week. http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=600.

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2 Comments

  1. [...] confirmed recently by Laurie Wurster’s March 2011 article in the Harvard Business Review http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=619.  In particular, Android has been spectacularly successful and was a significant factor in [...]

    Pingback by Law & Life: Silicon Valley » Open Source Think Tank 2011: Understanding the Present and Predicting the Future — April 12, 2011 @ 1:34 pm

  2. [...] This year, 2011, was one of the most active years in legal developments in FOSS. This activity reflects the increase in FOSS use: Laura Wurster of Gartner, noted in the Harvard Business Review blog that open source has hit a “strategic tipping point” this year with companies increasingly focused on using “open source” software for competitive rather than cost reasons http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=619.    [...]

    Pingback by Law & Life: Silicon Valley » 2011: Top Ten FOSS Legal Developments — January 9, 2012 @ 12:53 pm

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