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New utility helps prevent software license violations

By on April 23, 2002 (8:00:00 AM)

- by Tina Gasperson -
LIDESC is a new "license awareness" tool created by Forrest J. Cavalier. He says the command-line utility automates the process of checking license requirements when many files are combined to create new software, whether proprietary or Open Source.

"Checking license requirements on many files by hand is very tedious," says Cavalier. "LIDESC allows you to 'stamp' the file once, and then look up the license terms in a description file automatically. You can check a whole tree of files to report what each license requires in general terms (like if a license requires notices in documentation, or redistribution of source code.) You can even specify local rules that will trigger an error report if certain license terms appear."

The LIDESC tool allows users to attach to the end of a file a small descriptive summary of the license terms, which is the "stamp." Then, by running a small process to collect the stamps from a group of files, the user can create a report showing the terms of the various licenses, and optionally including the full text of each license in the output.

Cavalier has created stamps for most of the Open Source Initiative-approved licenses, and they are available for download, along with the source code for the LIDESC utility, at www.mibsoftware.com/librock/lidesc/. For other licenses, Cavalier extends an opportunity to third parties to create certified stamps for their product licenses. He's included a complete description of the process for doing so, along with a Web form that provides you with LIDESC_TAG strings, which are the standard symbolic terms used by LIDESC to create stamps and generate reports. All you have to do is check the appropriate boxes, indicating the important conditions of your software license. Is redistribution of source allowed? Is the license holder allowed to discriminate in that redistribution? Select the applicable responses, submit the form, and you get a report that shows all the LIDESC_TAG strings.

The form also checks and provides a detailed report on each condition, including a list of other licenses that include the specific string, for comparison purposes.

LIDESC is important because it "lowers the barriers to companies considering adopting Free and Open Source software," says Cavalier. "Even though most of the licensing violations I have read about are inadvertent and resolved quickly, no publisher wants to risk a legal surprise." He says that LIDESC will help developers understand all of their obligations, and that in itself will encourage more businesses to take advantage of Open Source and Free Software.

"More widespread commercial use of Open Source and Free software will always benefit the community. Something good always comes back, even if it just bug fixes."

The LIDESC utility is Free Software and is freely available for download from the Mib Software site -- but it is not only for use with Free or Open Source software, says Cavalier. "LIDESC is a tool for all software written or acquired. It comes with descriptions for many Free and Open Source licenses, because that is what is closest to my heart. But LIDESC can be used with proprietary licenses just as easily."

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How will the Microsoft police take this one?

Posted by: gerardm on April 24, 2002 02:40 AM

Microsoft and its software police tell you that you have to have your house in order. They have the law on their side when you get pressured to inventory your software and their licenses. Given that they take the moral highground and argue that time spend on this inventory is time well spend, I would think it reasonable when they DO provide the tools to cover their licenses with this and ANY tool.

As the inventory may also be needed on systems that are wholy linux based (do not wine..), they cannot argue that Microsoft OS based tools would suffice.

Irony

Posted by: static on April 24, 2002 11:12 PM

Sounds like something M$ would love to use. What is really funny is if this guy releases this under the GPL AND M$'s plans go through to disallow any GPL software on M$ OS's, they can't use it!

What happens if someone like M$ takes a GPL'ed app and basically alters it a little and makes it closed source? How would people know they did anything wrong if we can't see the closed sourcecode?