License Compliance Management
Unauthorised and unstructured usage of Open Source Software in commercial applications endangers the commercial success of many projects. Licence compliance management helps mitigate this risk while retaining the advantage of increased code re-use and development efficiency.
Modern software projects integrate a multitude of components of various origins. Among these is an ever-increasing amount of Open Source Software (OSS). These OSS components are often freely and easily available on the Internet but may carry massive risks when used in an unauthorised or unstructured fashion.The unchecked use of OSS can prove to be both dangerous and expensive: failure to fully understand open source licences can lead to penalties ranging from incompatibilities with other components of the application right up to being forced to release all source code publicly or cease from distributing a product.
With licence compliance management, development companies, from small shops to distributed organisations with many levels of subcontractors, can largely guarantee that the application they produce does not violate copyright law. At the same time, establishing an ongoing licence compliance management framework enables organisations to effectively manage the re-use of OSS and reap the benefits of an ecosystem of high-quality, freely-available software components.
The customer’s benefits at a glance:
- Mitigates risks associated with usage of third-party components
- Increases development efficiency through legal re-use of existing components
- Provides transparency around the IP-architecture of systems
- Can be tightly integrated with development environments to provide continuous, up-to-date compliance status
