Developers who create open source software hold the copyright to their work but grant users a license, typically the GPL, to use and modify the software. However, users have obligations under these licenses, such as making any modified versions of the software freely available. Some companies download and use open source software without attending to their license obligations, risking legal issues. Stakeholders in open source software include developers, companies that use or develop software, programmers, and general users. Utilitarian and deontological analyses both support following open source licenses to maximize benefits and fulfill duties around intellectual property. Developers should give credit to original creators and make any modifications publicly available, while companies should verify that license terms are followed.

1. Names- Anju Amatya

2. ACSG-575

3. Essay #2 – Ethical Considerations in Open-Source Software Usage

4. Introduction

5. Open source refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers wants. Most Open Source software is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), additionally requires that if a modified version of the software is distributed, the source code for such modified version must be made freely available. In essence, creators of Open Source software hold the copyright for their work, but grant a license (the GPL) to anyone who wants to use it. It is important to understand that open source comes with license obligations. Most software engineers download the free open source and use it within their own commercial software without attending to those obligations. The important thing is to understand these obligations and to be clear about which license obligations are acceptable to you and which license obligations are not. The most important use of open source software is on university level student where they can not only learn about software but with the source code they can also have in-depth knowledge about the software and can learn much about it. <br />Comparing open source and proprietary software both have some pros and cons. Open source software is very low priced or even free. With free software, such as Linux, the source is freely available for download. People are encouraged to look at it and try to find bugs. And thousands of people do look at the code. The end result is that there are far more people proofreading and fixing code, and the program has fewer bugs and is more stable. The risk in open source software is potential liability for intellectual property infringement. While proprietary software is one that is owned by an individual or a company. There are almost always major restrictions on its use, and its source code is almost always kept secret and one of the most common prohibitions for such programs are making unauthorized copies, using it on more than a certain number of computers. With proprietary software only the developer of the program have access to its source code which makes it impossible for others to find problems in the code before they cause damage. <br />In the article the defenders of free software, Armijn Hemel who lives in Netherlands is against the use of free software. From the past 5 year he has been working as a volunteer watchman for free, open-source software like Linux operating system and is monitoring on the companies who uses open source instead of building software for their products from scratch and he found some companies who violated the law associated with that free software like dell got a cease and desist letter for shipping its new Streak tablet without providing the open source software code and later they published the code on their website but other companies may be because of their ignorance or negligence have to pay large amount of money to the one whom that software belongs. There are some high profile companies like Cisco System, Best Buy, and Verizon Communication who have been sued by Software Freedom Law Center. There is some rule associated with open source software and some company fears that programmer of that software may charge them some large amount for violating their law. <br />Stakeholders<br />Stakeholder is the one who is affected or can be affected by the organizations actions and the effect could be strong, medium or low.

6. Some of the stakeholders on this issue are