Source code licensing as an essential aspect of modern software development

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Most large software applications are not built from scratch; instead, they are created by combining several components. These components are of various types, such as libraries, database management systems, stand-alone programs, and network services. Over the last decade, various research efforts have focused on the technical aspects of supporting and improving component-driven software development processes. However, little attention has been directed toward its legal complexities. This aspect has been complicated by the availability of widely-used open source components (such as those of the Eclipse and the Apache Foundations) that are used in both commercial, and open source applications. The creators of component-based applications must frequently combine components with differing licenses (often commercial and open source) to create a new software application with its own license. Each of these licenses will impose certain constraints that should be honoured by the resulting system. Over time the licenses of components (or the resulting system) might change, old components dropped, and new ones added, making it necessary to consider licensing issues as another important concern of the software evolution and maintenance cycle. The main objectives of this research program are 1) to create models that abstract the challenges and issues of creating and evolving systems based on components with multiple licenses, and 2) methods and techniques to address and solve these challenges. This includes: