This is BS. I've talked employers into releasing all sorts of useful things under FOSS licenses over the years. The conversation has always been like "we have this handy thing, and it's not related to our core business at all, and there's no way it'd be a marketable product, but other people could probably use it, too." And the release process has always been like "here's a thing we made to solve a problem we had, and it works for us, and maybe other people could also use it."<p>In every case, we used those projects in production in our own shop. The tools worked for us. If they didn't, we kept tweaking until they did. They may not have been perfect in all possible scenarios, but they were useful for us.<p>And if my employers faced any liability problems whatsoever, they'd never have given me permission to release them.<p>Imagine suing Linus because Linux turns out to be vulnerable to an attack that hasn't been invented yet. The OpenBSD gang for finding and fixing a bug, even though it wasn't known to be exploitable, because it <i>could</i> have been. My boss because a little tool I wrote turned out to have a problem in an environment and use case we'd never imagined anyone using it in.<p>This is bullshit.<p>Update: A lot of readers have been quick to point out that the BS laws don't apply to all situations. That doesn't help the situation. "Hey, boss, can I give this tool I made away? If an ambulance chaser sues us for idiotic reasons, we'll probably be fine because the law doesn't cover how we're releasing it. Hey, come back here! Stop running!" I present as evidence jackasses like this: <a href="https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/disbarred-attorney-continues-to-file-ada-lawsuits" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/disbarr...</a><p>Yeah, I'm sure my employer would eventually win a frivolous lawsuit, but the mere possibility of that being an issue would be catastrophic to FOSS as we know it.