The freewheeling world of open-source software has unsettled the financial reporting community lately with rumors that using improper versions of the popular Linux operating system might violate the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
The twisty discussion was sparked last month when Wasabi Systems, a Virginia-based developer of Linux-based data storage software, suggested that other software makers might be violating SOX if they had built new Linux code into their software products but did not share that code with the open-source community. Sharing code—which cuts development costs—is a requirement for anyone who wants to use the Linux operating system.
