Improving License Compliance for Software Development

自由和开源软件（FOSS）在工业中被广泛重用。广义地说，自由/开源软件是一种许可下的软件，允许在一系列条件下重用和创建衍生作品。虽然重用自由/开源软件通常不涉及金钱交易，但重用软件的组织必须遵守其许可证设置的条件，以便有权重用和重新分发软件。***目前的许可分析采用了一种通用的模式。它假定建立一个制度的法律约束是普遍的，只需要考虑一次。然而，由于各种法律和技术原因，情况通常并非如此：(a)有关软件的法律因司法管辖区而异；(b)关于软件开发的法律约束通常是模糊的或未经测试的，并且需要解释；(c)许多自由/开源软件包提供了配置构建过程的能力，以便自定义构建系统的哪些部分，因此，相同源代码的不同“构建”可能有不同的法律约束；(d)自由/开源软件的来源信息很难确定。自由/开源软件经常被复制、重命名、移动，而且很难看到代码的起源、真正的版权所有者是谁、代码何时以及如何被复制到另一个系统中。****这项建议研究的目标是解决这些问题，并创建模型和工具，以帮助开发人员和法律团队遵守许可。特别地，本基金将支持以下研究目标：***1。执行实证研究，以了解希望重用许可组件的组织面临的挑战。***2。开发一个模型和方法来正式评估软件的许可遵从性，并开发一个原型来证明其可行性。开发方法和技术来改进软件工件的发现、可追溯性和管理，以及构建实现它们的工具。*可重用组件的许可要求管理是业界缺乏研究的关键问题。我们提出的研究、模型、方法和工具将解决这一问题，并将通过降低许可组件的重复使用成本来帮助工业界提高生产率

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is widely reused in industry. Broadly speaking, FOSS is software under a license that allows for its reuse and the creation of derivative works under a set of conditions. While reusing FOSS usually involves no monetary transaction, the organization reusing the software must comply with the conditions set by its license in order to have the right to reuse and redistribute the software.***Current licensing analysis assumes a one-size-fits-all model. It presumes that the legal constraints of building a system are universal and only need to be considered once. However, this is usually not the case due to a variety of legal and technical reasons: (a) the law regarding software varies across jurisdictions; (b) the legal constraints regarding software development are often ambiguous or untested and subject to interpretation; (c) many FOSS packages offer the ability to configure the build process in order to customize what parts of the systems are builtas a consequence, different "builds" of the same source code might have different legal constraints; and (d) FOSS provenance information is difficult to determineFOSS is often copied, renamed, moved, and it is not always easy to see where code originated, who the true copyright owner is, and when and how the code was copied into another system. ****The goal of this proposed research is to address these issues and create models and tools to assist developers and legal teams with license compliance. In particular, this grant will support the following research goals:***1. Perform empirical studies to understand the challenges of organizations wanting to reuse licensed components.***2. Develop a model and method that formalizes the evaluation of licensing compliance for software and a prototype to demonstrate its feasibility.***3. Develop methods and techniques to improve the discovery, traceability and management of the provenance of software artifacts, as well as build tools that implement them. *The management of license requirements of reusable components is a critical problem of industry for which there is a lack of research. The studies, models, methods and tools we propose will address this problem and will help industry improve its productivity by reducing the cost of the reuse of licensed components.**