In reviewing the language and concepts being used in the various draft bills and directives circulating in Brussels at present, it is clear that the experts crafting the language are using their understanding of proprietary software to build the protections they clearly intend for Open Source.
The news that the European Commission’s competition directorate (DG COMP) has decided not to conduct a full antitrust investigation into the Alliance for Open Media’s (AOM) licensing policy is to be welcomed.
The ClearlyDefined project was invited to give an update as part of the OpenChain webinar series. I had the opportunity to share with this global community the project's mission: to create a global database of licensing metadata for every Open Source software component ever published.
What might happen if the uncertainty persists around who is held responsible under the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)? The global Open Source community is averse to legal risks and generally lacks access to counsel, so it’s very possible offers of source code will simply be withdrawn rather than seeking to resolve the uncertainty.