On the provenance of Free and Open Source Software and the legal

implications of its reusebased on A Method for Open Source License Compliance of

Java Applications, IEEE SoftwareMay-June 2012 (vol. 29 no. 3)

Daniel M GermanProfessor

Department of Computer ScienceUniversity of Victoria

IP is an engineering problem too

● Sure, Intellectual Property is the realm of lawyers

● But software engineers have to fix it.

Open Source

● Open Source– software licensed under an open source license

● Open source LicenseOpen source License– allows the creation of derivative works

– and their redistribution

As long as some conditions are satisfied

Reuse and Open Source

● FOSS materialized Component-Off-The-Shelf software engineering– Huge pool of components ready to be used

– Free but with a price: ● Comply with the license

FOSS is everywhere today

● Used by both organizations and individuals– Part of many commercial products

● OS X, Android, many embedded devices

● Created by many commercial companies– Apple, Google, HP, Ebay, Amazon,

Samsung, IBM, TI, Oracle, etc.

“The way software is built is changing”

—Scott Patterson

Previous Senior Legal Counsel, HP

Software architectures are complex

● Frameworks● Libraries● Plug-ins● Operating systems● Scripts● Toolkits

Each comes with its own license

Not so simple

Reuse is Easy

● Re-using FOSS is very easy– Black box:

● reuse as a component

– White box: ● Clone: copy entire product own's code base● Cut-and-paste: copy snippets

But Risky

● Most developers don't have training in licensing

● Many think they do but don't

● Most organizations lack policies regarding use of FOSS

* Sojer and Henkel 2010

Open Source License Compliance

● It is in need of tool support– Mostly provided by (expensive) organizations

● Blackduck, Palamida, OpenLogic● Treat everything as Trade Secret

● License Compliance can't trustanybody

● Developers/Suppliers:– Don't know, forget, ignore, lie ...

The big questions

● Who are you and where did you come from?– Provenance discovery

● What role do you play?– Architectural discovery

● Does your mother know youare here?– License discovery

Provenance is Complicated

● Was this source file:– Locally developed?

– Copied?

● If copied:– What is the source?

● Can we trust the source?

Software Bertillonage

● Measure certain properties of a software system– Use these properties to create classifications and reduce

search space

● Joa:– Bertillonage for Java– Based on Class and Method signatures– Capable of matching binaries and source – Open Source (GPLv2+)– http://github.com/dmgerman/joa

Joa helps determine what is in binary

The general problem is harder

ffmpeg libavfilter

License Identification

● Once you know the original code– What is its license?– Ninka

● Identify license from source code● Open source (AGPLv3+)● http://github.com/dmgerman/ninka

Ninka

● Design goals:– To sacrifice recall for the sake of accuracy

● Rather be safe then wrong● Support “I don't know”

– To be faster than fossology– To support the most common licenses, yet be extensible– To have a very simple “pipe” architecture

● Collection of small tools● The output of one feeds into the other

Component level composition

● Requires architectural analysis● How are components connected?

– Type of connection?● Linking? Dynamic? Static?● Fork/System exec?● Web service?● RPC?

Putting all Pieces Together

Conclusions

● FOSS reuse is here to stay● Organizations should be careful on how they

reuse FOSS– FOSS License Compliance

● Software is needed to help● We have implemented a method to help in

license compliance of Java Applications– Joa: provenance– Ninka: licensing