Software License Analyzer and Compatibility Reporter
Copyright 2001, Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Email: mibsoft@mibsoftware.com
Based on answers to questionairre below, LIDESC, the Librock License Awareness
software, will report some known incompatibilities and conflicts. This version checks
for conflicts with the GPL, the FSF definition of Free Software, the Open Source
Definition, and closed-source licensing. The report generated also includes lists of
previously analyzed example licenses which have similar clauses.
Clicking on the examples link under each symbolic tag will give more details about compatibility, as well as a list of currently catalogged licenses with the same symbolic tag. Please let us know of any errors or omissions. We are especially looking for example licenses for tags that have no examples.
WARNING: A simple program like this does nothing more than find and report some of the biggest problems, while leaving others undetected. This system does not match the educated human intelligence required to interpret and apply licenses. On the other hand, it can be useful to identify some license clauses which deserve extra scrutiny.
The system notes conflicts and compatibility when appropriate. There are a number of sources of these interpretations. The FSF publishes discussion and evaluations of licenses. The OSI maintains a mailing list where OSD conflicts are discussed. Although there is no established definition of "closed-source compatible," for combination purposes here, a license is "closed-source compatible" if
1. the developer is never required to disclose source.
2. the developer can require a fee is paid for every redistribution.
3. the developer is not compelled to grant patents or different license terms to anyone.
Intended Purpose
We make part of the system public in the hopes it can serve developers, legal professionals, and researchers, in a number of ways:
As a license selector. A software developer can choose which license attributes are important for a given project, and then get a list of already existing licenses with some or all of those attributes. The developer will get a good idea if such a license is GPL compatible, or conflicts with the OSD or the FSF's idea of Free software.
The report is a good starting point for further study and consideration of their choices, or selection of an existing license or phrasing to use.
As an index of types of license clauses. The example license pages which are linked below and in the report, provide a way to quickly identify licenses containing particular clauses. There is a large body of past discussion of license terms and implications, and some case law. Given a license name, that existing commentary can be located elsewhere, or experts can more easily be consulted. (The pages below do link to a copy of the license text.)
As an issues awareness tool Those unfamiliar with the conditions of Free and Open Source software licensing can use this page to quickly identify problem clauses in a license, before submitting a license for approval for example.
As a starting point for further study. The symbolic tags are a start of a more formal way of classifying software licenses. This permits better communication when discussing licenses, and when identifing the similarities, differences, and compatibilities between the Open Source Definition, the Free Software Foundation's definition of Free Software, and the GPL. Better study using this tool may lead to revisions or adaptations of the above. It is possible to study how many of the already analyzed licenses would be affected by a change in one of the definitions for example.
Additional features available in Librock LIDESC
This software is part of a license compatibility and awareness system built into an upcoming release of librock. Librock is a collection of Free and open-source software from many authors, adapted for high-reusability and license awareness. LIDESC is an integral part of enabling professional software developers to easily work with software having a multitude of licenses.
Some features are not relevant here. For example, the abilities to identify all licenses which cover a combined work (optionally reporting incompatibilities), reject licenses as locally unacceptable, define other license attributes, and to incorporate the results of human analysis (instead of relying on symbolic tags) are provided as part of the full system, but are not useful here.