Software Licenses in Context: The Challenge of Heterogeneously-Licensed Systems
Authors: Alspaugh, Thomas; Scacchi, Walt; Asuncion, Hazeline
Journal: Journal of the Association for Information Systems (2010)
DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00241
The prevailing approach to free/open source software and licenses has been that each system is developed, distributed, and used under the terms of a single license. But it is increasingly common for information systems and other software to be composed with components from a variety of sources, and with a diversity of licenses. This may result in possible license conflicts and organizational liability for failure to fulfill license obligations. Research and practice to date have not kept up with this sea-change in software licensing arising from free/open source software development. System consumers and users consequently rely on ad hoc heuristics (or costly legal advice) to determine which license rights and obligations are in effect, often with less than optimal results; consulting services are offered to identify unknowing unauthorized use of licensed software in information systems; and researchers have shown how the choice of a (single) specific license for a product affects project success and system adoption. Legal scholars have examined how pairs of software licenses conflict but only in simple contexts. We present an approach for understanding and modeling software licen…