I was recently made the "open source representative" for our software team. Some of the duties include:
While I have some experience with FOSS, I was wondering:
Hi -
Make sure your legal team and technical team have same understanding of terminology - adopt a shared glossary
It will be helpful if you can come up with some analogies to explain what Open Source is, and why developers do it, especially if you will ask them to give guidance on allowing employees contribute to FOSS, either sponsored by the company, or in their own personal time.
You should ask your legal team to do analysis on the significant FOSS licenses (MIT, Apache, GLP to name but a few). This analysis should identify the constraints of using the licensed FOSS for in house development (i.e. that which is never distributed), and for developing solutions that is distributed to 3rd parties and solutions that are hosted. You'll find a lot of discussion around what constitues 'distribution' here.
Consider a tool such as Black Duck for the analysis of what FOSS is being used by your software team. Its expensive, its value will be based on your perception of exposure to FOSS risks
Good luck.
I think the first step is to clarify what your goals are with introducing FOSS, both consuming and possibly producing.
There's a nice licence comparison on Wikipedia.