Building software through an open-source community might result in a better product, but from a licensing standpoint it can be a nightmare. A single open-source application might contain millions of lines of code written by countless programmers worldwide. To help protect users of the application from copyright-infringement accusations, contributing programmers are often asked to abide by licensing terms put forth by the organization managing the open-source community.

The job of managing that and myriad other licensing issues at the Mozilla Foundation -- the nonprofit behind the popular Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail application, both of which are built on the open-source model -- falls to executive director Frank Hecker.

"Participating in an open-source project is not necessarily the ad hoc thought process that people might think," Hecker says. "People don't realize that we have to develop quite detailed policies because of the sheer numbers of ways that [software users] want to make use of the code and products over the years."

While legal challenges related to open source are rare, anxiety among users persists nonetheless. That's due largely to a few high-profile cases, including the ongoing lawsuit filed in 2003 by SCO Group Inc., owner of the Unix operating system, against IBM Corp. over source code IBM contributed to Linux. SCO didn't just sue IBM; it quickly went on to send letters to other corporations warning of legal action if they used Linux.

Fear of getting tangled in similar suits led companies to begin assessing the legal risks of open source and looking for assurances that they wouldn't be sued for copyright infringement. To give them those assurances at Mozilla, Hecker has a couple of tools at his disposal: the Mozilla Public License and the Firefox trademark.

Every programmer sharing code on the Mozilla Web site must agree to the terms of the MPL, which include turning over their copyrights and adhering to certain quality standards. The license also governs programmers from other countries who want to adapt a Mozilla product to their own languages or add features.

The Firefox trademark -- ranked by Interbrand Corp. as the No. 8 brand in the world behind the likes of Google and Starbucks -- helps ensure the quality of the brand and protects users from bad code that could, among other things, infect their computers. The company uses trademark licensing to force quality requirements onto anyone distributing the brand and to ensure they "are not shipping malicious versions of Firefox," says Hecker.

Anyone who wants to design a Firefox-compliant product or send out Firefox as part of another product can enter into a voluntary trademark licensing agreement, which gives Mozilla's programmers a chance to vet the product. When a licensing agreement isn't obtained for a Firefox-related product, and that product is later deemed unsuitable, Mozilla can sue.

Ultimately it is up to the business to ensure compliance with the licensing agreements associated with the technologies it uses, says Mark Tolliver, CEO of Palamida Inc., whose software is used to track and comply with licensing agreements affiliated with open-source code.

"In a mixed code world, I have to take more ownership for it myself," Tolliver says. "The big issue is people coming to grips with the fact that software, just because it's free, doesn't come without obligation."

As head of the Mozilla Foundation, Hecker makes sure companies don't have to figure it all out on their own. - Stacey Higginbotham

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