Managing Open Source Usage in Off-Shore, Outsourced Development: Best Practices - page 4

The Opportunities and Challenges of Open Source Software

In order to verify the vendor's usage of open source in the project, it's important to perform some sort of audit. These audits can be performed in a variety of ways. At a minimum you should assign a Software Architect, Technical Manager or a Consultant to review their code base and list any usage of open source they find. This person should also validate the "Statement of Open Source Usage" provided by the vendor.

There is also a new breed of software applications becoming available that can "analyze" a code base and look for open source code that has been copied directly into the code base being delivered. Given the terms of some of the more restrictive open source licenses currently in use, code copied directly into your code base can expose you to some of the most challenging and restrictive terms and obligations of these licenses. If the project is an important one, then this type of analysis is probably warranted.