Blackmoor Vituperative

This isn’t exactly a scoop, but hey, I’ve been busy.

Some have recently argued that corporate executives face increased risk of criminal liability under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) if their companies develop and distribute code licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The argument, as it has been made, raises significant concerns about SOX compliance, but it fails to clarify the scope and context of these points. We have reviewed these issues and, as discussed more fully below, there is in fact no special risk for developing GPL’d code under SOX. Under most circumstances, the risk posed to a company by SOX is not affected by whether they use GPL’d or any other type of software. Arguments to the contrary are pure anti-GPL FUD.

(from Software Freedom Law Center, Sarbanes-Oxley and the GPL: No Special Risk)

I’m not sure what Wasabi thought they were accomplishing by publishing their scare-tactics white paper, but anyone familiar with SarbOx and familiar with the terms of the GPL (and really, it isn’t hard to be one of those people, all it takes is some time to read up on them) can see that they’re blowing smoke. Shame on them.