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An exploratory study of the evolution of software licensing

Authors:

Massimiliano Di Penta,

Daniel M. German,

Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc,

Giuliano AntoniolAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '10: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 1

Pages 145 - 154

https://doi.org/10.1145/1806799.1806824

Published: 01 May 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Free and open source software systems (FOSS) are distributed and made available to users under different software licenses, mentioned in FOSS code by means of licensing statements. Various factors, such as changes in the legal landscape, commercial code licensed as FOSS, or code reused from other FOSS systems, lead to evolution of licensing, which may affect the way a system or part thereof can be subsequently used. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor licensing evolution. However, manually tracking the licensing evolution of thousands of files is a daunting task.

After presenting several cases of the effects of licensing evolution, we propose an approach to automatically track changes occurring in the licensing terms of a system. Then, we report an empirical study of the licensing evolution of six different FOSS systems. Results show that licensing underwent frequent and substantial changes.

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Cited By

Heymann LWintersgill NStalnaker TChaparro OPoshyvanyk D(2024)The Law Doesn't Work Like a Computer: Exploring Software Licensing Issues Faced by Legal PractitionersSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.4901954Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4901954
Pícha PSerbout S(2024)On the Adoption of Open Source Software Licensing - A Pattern CollectionProceedings of the 29th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, People, and Practices10.1145/3698322.3698341(1-7)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698322.3698341
Wu JBao LYang XXia XHu XSpinellis DConstantinou EBacchelli A(2024)A Large-Scale Empirical Study of Open Source License Usage: Practices and ChallengesProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3643991.3644900(595-606)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643991.3644900
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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE '10: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 1

May 2010

627 pages

ISBN:9781605587196

DOI:10.1145/1806799

General Chairs:
Jeff Kramer
Imperial College, London, UK
,
Judith Bishop
Microsoft Research, Redmond
,
Program Chairs:
Prem Devanbu
University of California at Davis
,
Sebastian Uchitel
University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Imperial College London, UK

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 01 May 2010

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ICSE '10: 32nd International Conference on Software Engineering

May 1 - 8, 2010

Cape Town, South Africa

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Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Heymann LWintersgill NStalnaker TChaparro OPoshyvanyk D(2024)The Law Doesn't Work Like a Computer: Exploring Software Licensing Issues Faced by Legal PractitionersSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.4901954Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4901954
Pícha PSerbout S(2024)On the Adoption of Open Source Software Licensing - A Pattern CollectionProceedings of the 29th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, People, and Practices10.1145/3698322.3698341(1-7)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3698322.3698341
Wu JBao LYang XXia XHu XSpinellis DConstantinou EBacchelli A(2024)A Large-Scale Empirical Study of Open Source License Usage: Practices and ChallengesProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1145/3643991.3644900(595-606)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643991.3644900
Pepe FNardone VMastropaolo ABavota GCanfora GDi Penta MBaysal OLinares-Vasquez MMoran KSteinmacher I(2024)How do Hugging Face Models Document Datasets, Bias, and Licenses? An Empirical StudyProceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1145/3643916.3644412(370-381)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3643916.3644412
Wintersgill NStalnaker THeymann LChaparro OPoshyvanyk D(2024)“The Law Doesn’t Work Like a Computer”: Exploring Software Licensing Issues Faced by Legal PractitionersProceedings of the ACM on Software Engineering10.1145/36437661:FSE(882-905)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643766
Stalnaker TWintersgill NChaparro ODi Penta MGerman DPoshyvanyk DRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)BOMs Away! Inside the Minds of Stakeholders: A Comprehensive Study of Bills of Materials for Software SystemsProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3623347(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3623347
Higashi YOhira MManabe Y(2023)Automating License Rule Generation to Help Maintain Rule-based OSS License Identification ToolsJournal of Information Processing10.2197/ipsjjip.31.231(2-12)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.2197/ipsjjip.31.2
Scarlato MNöth L(2023)LCV-CM: a FASTEN Open Source License Compliance Verifier with Compatibility Matrix.2023 17th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)10.1109/ICOSST60641.2023.10414244(1-7)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICOSST60641.2023.10414244
Xu WHe HGao KZhou MBissyandé TKlein JBird CSarro F(2023)Understanding and Remediating Open-Source License Incompatibilities in the PyPI EcosystemProceedings of the 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00175(178-190)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00175
Gonzalez-Barahona JMontes-Leon SRobles GZacchiroli S(2023)The software heritage license dataset (2022 edition)Empirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10377-w28:6Online publication date: 8-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-023-10377-w
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