In the past, most companies vigorously defended their copyright protections on internally developed software. But new companies like Facebook and Twitter are turning that practice on its head as they release internally developed code and contribute to a number of open source projects.
[login]O’Grady argues that these changes point to a number of new application development trends:
- Defaulting to open source
- Language heterogeneity
- No core competencies in project hosting
- Permissive licensing
- Precise identification of whether value lies in a company’s software or in its data
