Just a quick reply about Kuali OLE and Kuali projects in general. All Kuali Foundation apps are released under the Educational Community License v 2.0 - http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ecl2.php. Kuali OLE and many other Kuali apps use a firm called Black Duck to make sure we are current with all open source licensing that occurs within our codebase - they perform professinoal services audits of the code - http://www.blackducksoftware.com/services/professional-services One of the reasons that OLE joined in with the Kuali Foundation is because of the intellectual property support that is available to Kuali projects in terms of making sure that all of our code remains open under the ECLv2 and that others can not just take the code and try to assert IP rights over it. I hope this answers your questions about Kuali OLE. Thanks Robert ********************************** Robert H. McDonald Associate Dean for Library Technologies and Digital Libraries Associate Director, Data to Insight Center-Pervasive Technology Institute Executive Director, Kuali OLE Indiana University Herman B Wells Library 234 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, IN 47405 Phone: 812-856-4834 Email: [log in to unmask] Skype/GTalk: rhmcdonald AIM/MSN: rhmcdonald1 On 12/5/11 8:17 AM, "Emily Lynema" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >A colleague approached me this morning with an interesting question that I >realized I didn't know how to answer. How are open source projects in the >library community dancing around technologies that may have been patented >by vendors? We were particularly wondering about this in light of open >source ILS projects, like Kuali OLE, Koha, and Evergreen. I know OLE is >still in the early stages, but did the folks who created Koha and >Evergreen >ever run into any problems in this area? Have library vendors historically >pursued patents for their systems and solutions?