Organizations that are interested in using open source in their own products but are worries of intellectual property issues might want to examine a new, mostly free, assistance program just launched by the non-profit Linux Foundation. The Open Compliance Program includes an assessment checklist, training programs and software tools to monitor open source software usage. Especially in the growing field of mobile device and consumer electronics manufacturers, software development often involves use of multiple programs -- many open source -- in a single stack, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. - "You have a really complicated supply chain, where you might get source code coming from lots of different places, whether it is a chipset vendor, a mobile handset provider or embedded software vendor," he said. - "Managing open source license compliance is complicated." - "What we were looking for is [a way] to solve this complexity a...