Determining licensing attributes in composite software projects

1. Licensing in Composite Projects
Protecode Webinar Series
December 2014
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2. Confidential Protecode Inc. 2014
Agenda
 Open Source Software Adoption and Creation
 OSS Structure: Genesis vs Composite Projects
 Licensing in Composite OSS Projects
 Examples
 Wrap-up and Q/A
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Tiberius Forrester,
Director, Solution
Architecture
tforrester@protecode.com

3. OSS Market Penetration
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 Unstoppable growth
– 85% industry adoption (Gartner 2008)
– 98% worldwide adoption (Accenture 2010)
– 99% worldwide adoption (By 2016, Gartner)
 Adoption at various levels
– Organizational level
– Personal level
 Not a niche play
– Automotive, healthcare, financial
– Cloud, mobile, database, security
– Gaming, tools, imaging, aerospace
– Anything that includes any code!
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4. Open Source Software
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 What is OSS
– A software development and distribution model where software license
guarantees certain freedoms
– Also see OSI definition (http://opensource.org)
 The value
– Faster, functions, easier integration and customisation
– Interoperability, adoption of open standards
– No license costs
– Freedom from vendor lock ins
– Allows rapid development of complex software systems
– Hundreds of thousands of projects available
• Protecode GIPS Statistics:
– 2.2M packages,
– 0.5B OSS files
– 20B lines of code!
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5. Adoption in Technology Organizations
 Organizations and OSS
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– Risk assessment
• Risk of being involved vs risk of not being involved
– Consideration -> Adoption -> Integral part of business
 The most common factors affecting use of OSS in software
projects
– Concerns regarding intellectual property / licensing
– Concerns regarding the security of the software
– Service & support
– Product capabilities/maturity
– Difficulty of adoption / integration
– Software quality – end user satisfaction
– Software enhancements – innovation over time
– Viability of the open source community
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6. Licensing challenges of OSS
 Produced by large number of developers over time
– Bazaar model: policy of fast and frequent releases, release
candidates, possibility of governance impairments
 Questionable due diligence efforts of committers
– Re-licensing efforts may not have been correctly handled
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 Code may:
– Contain nested packages with their own set of issues
– Contain code from books or community websites
– Implement patents
– Implement specifications that are subject to a license
– Contain code generated by a tool where the output could
be a derivative of input
– Contain or implement APIs that may have their own
obligations
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7. OSS Project Communities
 Provide support infrastructure
– Organizational, legal and in most cases financial
• Funding through membership fees
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 Examples:
– Linux Foundation
– Apache Software Foundation
– Eclipse Foundation
– Mozilla, Openstack, Django, Internet System Consortium (BIND
project), OpenLDAP, Drupal, Postgres, OpenSSL
 Established processes for
– Defining governance & policies
– Managing collaboration, security, documentation, conflicts
 Generally associated with continuous innovation, trusted
licensing, peer-reviewed quality
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8. OSS Project Types
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 Genesis
– Homogenous licensing
– Original content, no 3rd party included in packages
Example: log4j
 Composite
– Mixed or homogenous licensing
– Some original content, some 3rd party
Example: Vaadin
 Distributions
– Mostly mixed licensing
– Mostly repackaged 3rd party
– Generally well structured, many packages
Example: 4MLinux
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lib

9. Licensing in Composite Projects
Confidential Protecode Inc. 2014
 Project license
– A top level license, or top level document listing applicable licenses
– Look for website information, LICENSE, COPYING, or README files
 Subfolder licenses
– Indicate sub-level OSS projects
– Not always present
 File licenses
 Exceptions: subfolder holding binaries or libraries
– Generally do not have a license document
– You are on your own to determine the binary or library licenses
 Beware: binaries may expand into many subcomponents
– With their own (hidden or undeclared) licenses
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10. Licenses and Copyrights in Headers
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Source: analysis of 0.5 Billion OSS files in
Protecode GIPSTM Database

11. Project and License Mixes
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Percentage of OSS packages and variety of licenses mentioned in the
file headers

12. License Compatibility
 Licenses with unacceptable terms
 Licenses with conflicting terms
– Not all licenses are compatible
– Example: GPL (and its varieties) are incompatible with most other
licenses (See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html for a detailed list)
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13. Copyleft vs Permissive Licenses
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14. Composite Project 1
 Grails (www.grails.org)
– Open source web application framework
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15. Composite Project 2
 PhantomJS (BSD licensed, but includes QT, and other
LGPL licensed libraries)
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16. Composite Project 3
 OggCodecs – Directshow filters for Ogg Vorbis
 Package analysed: 0.61.7571
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17. More details in “flac” subfolder …
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 Care must be taken to
– investigate the whole package permissions,
– remove unnecessary files, or
– use later versions
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18. Confidential Protecode Inc. 2014
Wrap up
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 If you do not use open source software, you will be left out
– Managed adoption of open source software
 Open source projects are composite projects
– … unless proven otherwise
– Declared licenses may not match the visible, or hidden, sublicenses
 OSS packages released by formal OSS communities are preferred
 Compliance requires
– Knowledge of what OSS packages are used
– Access to OSS package, its licenses, description and notes
– Scanning of the package, determination of its composite nature, declared and
hidden licenses
– Ensuring the terms of the sublicenses are compatible and acceptable.
– Removing any component that is not needed
 Prevention works better than correction
– Package pre-approval, due diligence during development, and at build time

19. About Protecode
 Open source compliance and security vulnerability management
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solutions
– Reduce IP uncertainties, manage security vulnerabilities and ensure compliance
– www.Protecode.com
 Accurate, usable and reliable products and services for organizations
worldwide
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20. Confidential Protecode Inc. 2014
Q/A
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21. Because Code Travels
www.protecode.com
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