Date & Time/Location: 3-26-09, 10:15am-11:15am, Salon D
As open source moves from novelty to mainstream, business and economic issues have become a leading topic for organizations looking to adopt technologies that use or are based on open source. Historically, the subscription agreement has been the dominant contractual model that vendors use to deliver support for enterprise level open source software to their clients. Despite its widespread use, many misconceptions prevail regarding the subscription model, and many organizations do not obtain the value they should from their subscription relationships. In addition, new licensing models are being introduced with their own set of benefits and issues. Many organizations do not fully understand the impact of licensing issues involved with open source software. Our panel will address, from a variety of perspectives, the legal, business and technical issues attendant with software contracts and open source licenses, provide practical advice on the pros and cons of different licensing vehicles and how to leverage these tools to derive maximum value.