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When it comes to a company's use of OSS, I can't see any problems
in day-to-day use so long as you observe the licenses.
Foreign governments are generally quite supportive of OSS, and so I
can't see how their doing anything that would provide obstacles for it.
The one caution I would suggest has to do with the author's or
artist's moral rights (distinct from copyright) in a composition,
that is the right to be recognized as the creator of a work, and the
right to protect the integrity of the work, and sometimes to withdraw
the work from distribution or public gaze. Laws on moral rights vary
from country to country, and some jurisdictions hold that moral
rights cannot be waived.
In the United States moral rights are recognized to some extent for
visual art works, but not at all when it comes to software source
code. And even places that are the home of moral rights like France
and Germany temper the law to accommodate software, particularly with
regard to modifying it.
Some Open Source licenses require that the author's name be preserved
when the work is distributed, whether in original or altered
form. The Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA), on the other hand, is
wary enough of moral rights claims that it requires software
contributors to agree not to enforce their moral rights in the
software they contribute.
When it comes to foreign countries, where moral rights tend to have
more standing in court than in the U.S., you would be wise to have
any software contributors expressly disclaim in writing their moral
rights in the contributed software.
As a side note, you should be aware that some overseas translators of
documentation may have moral rights in their translations, even if
you have purchased the copyright from them.
I cannot think of a case in which a foreign court has trampled on an
OSS license, and we have at least one case of a German court
enforcing the GNU GPL.
For more information on international intellectual property rights, click here.
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