As a software developer working for a large clothing store chain, you are responsible for creating software used to connect retail store computers to a central database at the head office. recently, some friends of yours suggested that you publish your software under the gpl. what are some direct benefits to publishing your software under the gpl? to publish software made for a company under the gpl, you need the company's permission because the company owns any software that it pays developers to create. when you approach people in your company regarding oss and explain how companies benefit from releasing software as open source, you are asked what benefits the company will receive from funding an open source project over time. your company also wants to know what the procedure is for releasing and maintaining oss. what benefits will you offer them? where could you send them to gain more information on procedures involved in the open source community?

software published under general public license(GPL) makes the software an open source software meaning that the public are free to change, study, share and run the program as they please.

Benefits of open source software/GPL include:

-General feedback and quick identification of bugs in software code

-Community contribution to new features, therefore costing the company less in releasing new features

- quick popularity of software as different people come to use and contribute to development

-open source softwares are even more important as they form stepping stones for even better software, reusability, code can be reused for other software development and there won't be any need to code that same functionality

If the company wishes to get more information on opens piece software's and communities or procedures regarding development of open source software, they could check out open source initiative,www.opensource.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting open source communities and softwares