Resources for Open Source Compliance

Open source is everywhere today and there is growing awareness that companies have to meet certain obligations when distributing open source software. Here are some useful resources to learn more about open source compliance.

• Organizations
  • The FSF Free Software Licensing and Compliance Lab handles all licensing-related issues for the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the maintainers of the GPL license. They offer a lot of information about the GPL and other open source licenses.
  • The Freedom Task Force (FTF) of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) shares knowledge about open source licensing and offers training about licensing and related topics for companies.
  • The GPL-Violations project is a good point of contact for resolving GPL violations, especially in Europe.
  • The Open Source Initiative (OSI) maintains the Open Source Definition and approves open source licenses.
  • The Software Freedom Law Center provides legal representation and other law-related services to open source projects and shares a lot of knowledge on legal topics, such as a legal issues primer for open source projects.
• Communities
  • FOSSBazaar is an open community about the governance of open source. It provides a platform to discuss and exchange best practices related to the governance of open source.
  • The FSFE Legal Network is an invitation-only network of legal professionals and compliance folks that aims to facilitate knowledge exchange.
• News and journals
  • Groklaw is a web site that covers legal news of interest to the open source community.
  • The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review is a collaborative legal publication aiming to increase knowledge and understanding among lawyers about open source issues.
• Conferences
  • EOLE, the European Open Source & Free Software Law Event, is an annual conference in Europe to disseminate legal knowledge and develop best practices.
  • The European Legal Network (ELN) workshop is the annual meeting of the FSFE legal network.
• Software
  • The Binary Analysis Tool can be used to audit the contents of compiled software.
  • FOSSology is a tool to study and analyze open source code. It can be used for license and copyright detection.
  • The Open Source License Checker is a tool for the inspection and analysis of license information from open source packages.
  • Proprietary tools from Black Duck Software, Palamida, etc.