Over the past decade, a powerful new approach to development - open source software - has risen to prominence, dramatically increasing the opportunity to re-use existing software. As with commercial components, the ownership of externally developed open source components and fragments remains with their authors.

When beginning to adopt Best Practices, several 'getting started' tasks should be considered by the individual or teams responsible for development and licensing. An organization intent on managing its software intellectual property should identify the responsible business, legal, and technical individuals who will be involved in the process.

In summary, this report describes a set of seven best practices whose objective is to encourage development based on component re-use and software assembly. By integrating these practices in its development processes, organizations will have far greater assurances of compliance with all relevant license obligations and far more effective protection of software intellectual property.