We do not control and may be unable to predict the future course of open source technology development, including the ongoing development of open source components used in our OpenNMS platform, which could reduce the market appeal of our OpenNMS platform and services and damage our reputation. We do not control many aspects of the development of the open source technology in our OpenNMS platform. Different groups of open source software programmers collaborate with one another to develop the software projects in our OpenNMS platform. Given the disparate inputs from various developers, we cannot control entirely how an open source project develops and matures. Also, different open source projects may overlap or compete with the ones that we incorporate into our OpenNMS platform. The technology developed by one group for one project may become more widely used than that developed by others. If we acquire or adopt a new technology and incorporate it into our OpenNMS platform but a competing technology becomes more widely used or accepted, the market appeal of our OpenNMS services may be reduced and that could harm our reputation, diminish our brand and result in decreased revenue. If open source software programmers, many of whom we do not employ, or our own internal programmers do not continue to develop and enhance open source technologies, we may be unable to develop new technologies, adequately enhance our existing technologies or meet customer requirements for innovation, quality and price. We rely to a significant degree on a number of open source software programmers, or committers and contributors, to develop and enhance components of our OpenNMS platform. Additionally, members of the corresponding open source project management committees, are primarily responsible for the oversight and evolution of the codebases of important components of the open source data management ecosystem. If the open source data management committers and contributors fail to adequately further develop and enhance open source technologies, or if the committees fail to oversee and guide the evolution of open source data management technologies in the manner that we believe is appropriate to maximize the market potential of our solutions, then we would have to rely on other parties, or we would need to expend additional resources, to develop and enhance our OpenNMS platform. We also must devote adequate resources to our own internal programmers to support their continued development and enhancement of open source technologies, and if we do not do so, we may have to turn to third parties or experience delays in developing or enhancing open source technologies. We cannot predict whether further developments and enhancements to these technologies would be available from reliable alternative sources. In either event, our development expenses could be increased and our technology release and upgrade schedules could be delayed. Delays in developing, completing or delivering new or enhanced components to our platform could cause our offerings to be less competitive, impair customer acceptance of our solutions and result in delayed or reduced revenue for our solutions. Our use of open source software could subject us to possible litigation or could prevent us from offering products that include open source software or require us to obtain licenses on unfavorable terms. A portion of the technologies we use incorporate “open source” software, and we may incorporate open source software in the future. Open source licenses may subject us to certain unfavorable conditions, including requirements that we offer our products that incorporate the open source software for no cost, that we make publicly available the source code for any modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the open source software, or that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of the particular open source license. We may license to others some of our software through open source projects which require us to make the source code publicly available, and therefore can affect our ability to protect our intellectual property rights with respect to that software. If an author or other third party that distributes open source software that we use or license were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of the applicable license, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from offering our products that contained the open source software, required to release proprietary source code, required to obtain licenses from third parties or otherwise required to comply with the unfavorable conditions unless and until we can re-engineer the product so that it complies with the open source license or does not incorporate the open source software. Any of the foregoing could disrupt our ability to offer our products and harm our business, revenue and financial results. - 38 -
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