NDLI: Understanding and Auditing the Licensing of Open Source Software Distributions

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	German, D.M. Di Penta, M. Davies, J.
Copyright Year	2010
Abstract	Free and open source software (FOSS) is often distributed in binary packages, sometimes part of GNU/Linux operating system distributions, or part of products distributed/sold to users. FOSS creates great opportunities for users, developers and integrators, however it is important for them to understand the licensing requirements of any package they use. Determining the license of a package and assessing whether it depends on other software with incompatible licenses is not trivial. Although this task has been done in a labor intensive manner by software distributions, automatic tools to perform this analysis are highly desired. This paper proposes a method to understand licensing compatibility issues in software packages, and reports an empirical study aimed at auditing licensing issues in binary packages of the Fedora-12 GNU/Linux distribution. The objective of this study is (i) to understand how the license declared in packages is consistent with those of source code files, and (ii) to audit the licensing information of Fedora-12, highlighting cases of incompatibilities between dependent packages. The obtained results—supported by feedback received from Fedora contributors—show that there exist many nuances in determining the license of a binary package from its source code, as well as cases of license incompatibility issues due to package dependencies.
Starting Page	84
Ending Page	93
File Size	231351
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9781424476046
ISSN	10636897
e-ISBN	9781424476039
e-ISBN	9780769541136
DOI	10.1109/ICPC.2010.48
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2010-06-30
Publisher Place	Portugal
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Software licensing Software performance Mining software repositories Licenses Open source software Open source system Software packages Linux Operating systems Feedback Empirical study Packaging Evolution Performance analysis Software tools
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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