Colloquium Computer Science - dr. G. Kapitsaki

Title:

Licensing issues in open source software

Abstract:

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has offered a boost in emerging technologies, allowing users to use freely publicly available software and developers to incorporate third party software libraries into their implementations. Various open source communities consisting of active developers and bug fixers for specific projects can be encountered online. The terms under which the software has become available and is provided for use are depicted in the corresponding licenses. Licenses express how the software can be utilized by the potential users differentiating between rights and obligations of the users. This talk will provide information on the issues of open source licensing discussing the challenges of modelling open source licenses and of addressing license compliance. License modelling is important, as the text of open source licenses consists of natural language that is not easy to interpret. The issue of license compliance is linked with license violations that are encountered, when a software project integrates content from various sources that may carry different, and sometimes, conflicting licenses. In this talk, we will elaborate on the automation of the procedure of combining FOSS that carries different software licenses, and the approach that has been followed in order to address this problem in the framework of the open standard of Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX).