For a software engineer, open source software can be a fast and reliable way to fill in gaps in the coded part of a product when there’s no time to create new code. But for in-house counsel, it can be a headache dealing with the different licensing agreements that go along with open source.

“Engineers love it,” Sarah Beisheim of Xerox Corp. explained on Thursday during a panel discussion on IP at the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Corporate Counsel University in Philadelphia. She explained that engineers are turning to open source software as a way to find solutions to issues they face in their work at times when their funding decreases.