Berlin, 18.02.2020: Today, the association of the digital industry Bitkom published its latest study on the use of Open Source Software in the German industry. It shows a broad use of open source software in German companies: already 2/3 of the companies surveyed intentionally use open source software.
Reasons for the use of open source software besides cost saving are also IT-security aspects and access to the knowledge and innovation potential of the active open source community.
Surprisingly, only about half of the companies stated that they have an open source compliance process in place.
Using open source software without a proper compliance process can expose the company to a considerable legal risk: violations of license terms can lead to legal injunctive relief and also product recall or damage claims are conceivable as well.
The legally compliant use of open source software is not trivial, especially when using different licenses, and should be actively managed through appropriate processes.
Our partner Christian Czychowski and Sebastian Dworschak from NORDEMANN have materially contributed to the design and content of the Open Source Monitor 2019. We support companies in the legally compliant use of open source software ranging from legal assessment of individual software releases over representation in legal disputes to the implementation of comprehensive open source compliance processes. The complete study “Open Source Monitor 2019” can be downloaded for free here (German Version): www.bitkom.org/Bitkom/Publikationen/Open-Source-Monitor
