All fair in love and open source?

Palamida has been compiling a list of projects switching from GPLv2 to GPLv3 -- they have 940 so far. It's difficult, time-intensive research, aimed at giving Palamida a strategic advantage over rivals like Black Duck.

Then what do they open their browsers to find Monday morning, but a new Black Duck Open Source License Resource Center. And all their stuff is there, including the misspellings!

Thieve! Knave! Legal? Probably. While Palamida offered its research on an open source basis, Black Duck compiled its data with a spider which grabbed everything out there, including the Palamida stuff.

Here's how they spun it. They got other stuff, too. Their spider "validates" what goes into Black Duck's final product. They edited out 40 of Palamida's listed projects.

Palamida has changed the terms on use of its list, to a version of the Creative Commons license which asserts its copyright. (Oregon now uses a modified black O as its main logo.) Although the words horse, open, and barn door do leapt to mind here.

So, probably no law suit. But did Black Duck act ethically here? Is this duck really black, or white, or perhaps some shade of green?[poll id=60]