License tracing in free, open, and proprietary software

  • Authors:

  • Pete Nordquist;Anna Petersen;Angelina Todorova

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, Southern Oregon University, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR;Department of Computer Science, Southern Oregon University, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR;Department of Computer Science, Southern Oregon University, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

The freedom to view a program's source code is preserved by licensing this program with a free source license. Free and open software licenses often contain clauses that cause them to be incompatible with other software licenses. Thus, if a program is created from sources licensed under a variety of software licenses, it is important to identify the entire set of licenses applicable to this program, so that this set of licenses may be examined for conflicts. This paper describes a software tool that examines a program and the sources from which this program was built and produces the full set of software licenses applicable to this program. The tool also flags missing and potentially conflicting licenses. The intent of this tool is to promote an awareness of the sources from which a program is built and the software licenses applicable to this program. This tool is not warranted in any way. In particular, it cannot make determinations as to the legality of any combination of software licenses for any program.