Years ago, I interviewed a candidate for a role on my team. As usual, one of the ways I break the ice with candidates is to get them to talk "war stories".
The team he'd worked on had produced a tool that was only ever intended to be used by the team to solve a particular problem they had. It contained proprietary code.
Unknown to the team, word had spread about the tool, and others had started to use it, including solutions architects. Who started shipping it to customers to use, who absolutely loved it.
That'd be fine except one of the core libraries it used was GPLv3 licensed, and there was non-open source proprietary code used in the tool.
The nightmare scenario he found himself in was having to rapidly re-architect the tool around a non-GPLv3 licensed library, without breaking any functionality, all the while having to have regular sync up meetings with a furious CEO and Legal department (who, to be clear, were mad about the situation, not this particular developer or his team, who weren't to blame)
The team he'd worked on had produced a tool that was only ever intended to be used by the team to solve a particular problem they had. It contained proprietary code.
Unknown to the team, word had spread about the tool, and others had started to use it, including solutions architects. Who started shipping it to customers to use, who absolutely loved it.
That'd be fine except one of the core libraries it used was GPLv3 licensed, and there was non-open source proprietary code used in the tool.
The nightmare scenario he found himself in was having to rapidly re-architect the tool around a non-GPLv3 licensed library, without breaking any functionality, all the while having to have regular sync up meetings with a furious CEO and Legal department (who, to be clear, were mad about the situation, not this particular developer or his team, who weren't to blame)