In the open source community, is there great concern about open source software being usurped by proprietary vendors?
Becker: That’s one of the interesting developments. If you keep software proprietary, intellectual property is something you have to defend well. In proprietary software world, sometimes the software was used in another proprietary product and no one was the wiser because the code was hidden. There are many instances in which no one found about proprietary software for many years, and often it came out after the (offending) company was acquired. Just because we publish our source code for open source software doesn’t mean it’s public domain. If software is more open, you have much clearer boundaries. There are clear things that are allowed and specified. Sure, it’s easy for people to deliberately misinterpret things, figuring that if the software is published then they can take it and put it into their proprietary product, or they copy from it and not give attribution to the original author. The license clearly says that this is not acceptable. If your code is open you have the means t
