Rondeau Technology Inc.Welcome
Rondeau
Technology Inc. (RTI) is a consulting firm that specializes in
strategies for managing
the use of third party code, including open source code, in the
development of
proprietary software products. RTI also
has played a strong role in the development and management of the
Intellectual
Property policies of Open Source organizations.
While
Open Source code has gained wide acceptance for use throughout the
software
industry, there are a number of pitfalls that consistently trip up
developers,
and which can jeopardize a company’s ability to profit from its
software. And developers are notorious for
“borrowing”
software without ensuring that they have appropriate license rights.
Even
major corporations slip up. Late in 2009
it
came to light that a
blogging
application posted to Microsoft’s MSN site contained third party code
for which
it had no license - and in a separate incident, Microsoft
had
to pull a Windows7 download tool as it contained code licensed
under the
GPLv2 open source license. Microsoft may
well now have to publically release the full source of that tool as per
the requirements
of GPLv2.
RTI
can help companies avoid such problems, providing education and
guidance to developers
and their managers.
Experience
Peter
Tanner has over thirty-five years experience in the software and
telecommunications industries. Areas of
focus include intellectual property issues, open source, software
licensing,
contract negotiations and the development and maintenance of partner
programs.
Highlights
of this experience include:
- involvement with the creation of the Eclipse
Foundation;
- development of the governance and IP documents/policies for Open
Health Tools and OpenNTF, as well
as ascting as the IP Manager/Director for both these organizations;
- management licensing issues arising from the integration of acquired
companies
into IBM;
- development and management of an international network of business
partner
relationships in the embedded Java industry.