So many news articles and IT analysts’ reports have been written about open source software (OSS) and its rising popularity that the resulting mound of paper could probably wallpaper an area twice the size of Wales. However, with their characteristic, dogged resistance to change, commercial lawyers have continued to view the subject as the preserve of only the geekiest lawyers working in the technology, media and telecoms (TMT) department.
As a result, most commercial IT contracts assume that all software is proprietary, all source code is secret and that a broad third-party intellectual property indemnity is only matched by a Shakespearean sonnet in terms of lyrical perfection.
