To foster and control open-source inside Fidelity, Brenner says he helped put together the Open-Source Support Center (OSSC), an internal team of technologists and attorneys who evaluate open-source projects to ensure that they meet the company's technical and legal standards. The OSSC writes the rules governing Fidelity's use of open-source and publishes a list of acceptable licenses so developers know before they download code whether the license is acceptable.

Still, Brenner doesn't discourage developers from checking out tools whose licenses aren't on the list. He says if the OSSC considers the software a good technical fit, Fidelity will approach the owner of the copyright and negotiate a deal directly. Many of the dozens of licenses listed on the Open Source Initiative Web site (www.opensource.org) include a clause suggesting the copyright holder is willing to deal.

For example, Olson says, Sleepycat has signed more than 300 standard commercial licenses with companies because his firm owns all the copyrights to its embedded database software, BerkelyDB. In addition, few people know how many copyright holders there are to parts of Linux, which is covered by the GPL.

Service with a smile

Despite the trend toward software running as a service, most coercive open-source licenses consider the physical movement of bits from one machine to another to constitute unlicensed distribution. If you design your application to "isolate code segments so that they are calling each other as services," you're likely to be safe, Brenner says. That may change in future revisions to open-source licenses, but for now, Olson agrees that a service-oriented application architecture stays within the letter, if not the spirit, of open-source licensing.