Open source software is probably one of the most innovative advances in software development in the last couple decades.  However, it also is the source of greatest risk for intellectual property, as it has a lot of misappropriations, utilization of other people’s intellectual property, as well as, plain old copying of things that shouldn’t be in the software as well.

So, open software is an amalgam of other people’s code that is rarely policed well enough to guarantee the intellectual property rights of anyone utilizing it.  And it’s all covered under and an open source license, which also purports to change or alter or modify the rights in which you can use that software in a product or a commercial offering.  So, it makes it a very difficult thing, from a legal standpoint, to understand whose intellectual property is actually inside of the open source software and how it will affect your projects or software when you bring it into your own software.