Think-tank report lays into Linux

I know you all hate it when I bring up stories like this one. But I want to make sure all sides of the Linux debate are represented here. Unlike Windows, I like to think that even with reports such as the one I am presenting here, Linux and Open Source can stand on its own two feet.

Open-source software may be a legal time-bomb waiting to explode into a torrent of lawsuits, according to a new study from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (ADTI).

The report follows on from controversial studies in 2002 and 2004 in which ADTI president Kenneth Brown spotlighted alleged security concerns around the open-source development model and challenged Linus Torvalds’ claim to have invented the Linux kernel.

ADTI’s critics have noted that Microsoft is one of the think-tank’s financial backers, a fact acknowledged by ADTI and Microsoft, although ADTI has declined to discuss the funding of specific reports. Microsoft funds several think-tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.

Regardless of its funding sources, ADTI has an openly critical stance toward open source software, which it refers to as “open sores software” and “hybrid-source software” in a news section devoted to the topic on its website.

The new study, called Intellectual Property - Left?, focuses on what author Brown sees as a number of worrying legal issues that surround the open-source development model, and which he argues put open-source on a collision course with standard intellectual property law. The study will be made public shortly, Brown told Techworld.