@proceedings {1907,
	title = {Do Software Developers Understand Open Source Licenses?},
	year = {2017},
	note = {Data: We report on the results of a survey that asked
developers about 42 different cases of the use of code under
different open source licenses. To make the survey tractable
for developers to answer, we focused on three popular open
source licenses (GNU GPL 3.0, GNU LGPL 3.0 and MPL
2.0)

Findings: The survey results indicate that most of the 375 respondents
to our survey struggle with understanding the interaction of
open source licenses in both simple and complex software
development cases},
	month = {05/2017},
	pages = {1-11},
	abstract = {{\textemdash}Software provided under open source licenses is
widely used, from forming high-profile stand-alone applications
(e.g., Mozilla Firefox) to being embedded in commercial offerings
(e.g., network routers). Despite the high frequency of use of open
source licenses, there has been little work about whether software
developers understand the open source licenses they use. To our
knowledge, only one survey has been conducted, which focused
on which licenses developers choose and when they encounter
problems with licensing open source software. To help fill the
gap of whether or not developers understand the open source
licenses they use, we conducted a survey that posed development
scenarios involving three popular open source licenses (GNU GPL
3.0, GNU LGPL 3.0 and MPL 2.0) both alone and in combination.
The 375 respondents to the survey, who were largely developers,
gave answers consistent with those of a legal expert{\textquoteright}s opinion in
62\% of 42 cases. Although developers clearly understood cases
involving one license, they struggled when multiple licenses were
involved. An analysis of the quantitative and qualitative results of
the study indicate a need for tool support to help guide developers
in understanding this critical information attached to software
components.},
	keywords = {license, Survey},
	doi = {10.1109/ICPC.2017.7},
	author = {Almeida, Daniel A. and Murphy, Gail C. and Wilson, Greg and Hoye, Mike}
}
@proceedings {1911,
	title = {Machine Learning-Based Detection of Open Source License Exceptions},
	year = {2017},
	note = {"We address these questions by first performing a large scale mining-based study... [W]e analyzed the  source code of 51,754 projects written in six different programming languages (Ruby, Javascript, Python, C, C++, and C$\#$) hosted on GitHub. },
	month = {05/2017},
	pages = {118-129},
	abstract = {From a legal perspective, software licenses govern the redistribution, reuse, and modification of software as both source and binary code. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) licenses vary in the degree to which they are permissive or restrictive in allowing redistribution or modification under licenses different from the original one(s). In certain cases developers may modify the license by appending to it an exception to specifically allow reuse or modification under a particular condition. These exceptions are an important factor to consider for license compliance analysis since they modify the standard (and widely understood_ terms of the original license. In this work, we first perform a large-scale empirical study on the change history of over 51k FOSS systems aimed at quantitatively investigating the prevalence of known license exceptions and identifying new ones. Subsequently, we performed a study on the detection of license exceptions by relying on machine learning. We evaluated the license exception classification with four different supervised learners and sensitivity analysis. Finally we present a categorization of license exceptions and explain their implications.},
	keywords = {classifier, empirical studies, license, machine learning},
	doi = {10.1109/ICSE.2017.19},
	author = {Vendome, Christopher and Mario Linares-Vasquez and Bavota, Gabriele and Di Penta, Massimiliano and Daniel M. German and Poshyvanyk, Denys}
}
@inbook {1741,
	title = {First Results About Motivation and Impact of License Changes in Open Source Projects},
	booktitle = {Open Source Systems: Adoption and Impact},
	series = {IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology},
	volume = {451},
	year = {2015},
	pages = {137-145},
	publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
	organization = {Springer International Publishing},
	abstract = {Free and open source software is characterized by the freedoms and criteria that are warranted by specific licenses. These licenses describe the rights and duties of the licensors and licensees. However, a licensing change may be necessary in the life of an open source project to meet legal developments or to allow the implementation of new business models. This paper examines the motivations and impacts of license changes in open source projects. After a state of the art on the subject, a set of case studies where projects changed their license is presented. Then a set of motivations to change licenses, the ways to legally make this change, the problems caused by this change and a set of benefits of the license change are discussed.
},
	keywords = {Business model, Contributor agreement, intellectual property, license, open source},
	isbn = {978-3-319-17836-3},
	doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-17837-0_13},
	url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17837-0_13},
	author = {Viseur, Robert and Gregorio Robles},
	editor = {Damiani, Ernesto and Frati, Fulvio and Dirk Riehle and Wasserman, Anthony I.}
}
@proceedings {1729,
	title = {A Large Scale Study of License Usage on GitHub},
	volume = {2},
	year = {2015},
	note = {14.9\% of projects have a license file.},
	month = {05/2015},
	pages = {772-774},
	publisher = {ACM/IEEE},
	abstract = {The open source community relies upon licensing
in order to govern the distribution, modification, and reuse of
existing code. These licenses evolve to better suit the requirements
of the development communities and to cope with unaddressed
or new legal issues. In this paper, we report the results of a large
empirical study conducted over the change history of 16,221 open
source Java projects mined from GitHub. Our study investigates
how licensing usage and adoption changes over a period of ten
years. We consider both the distribution of license usage within
projects of a rapidly growing forge and the extent that new
versions of licenses are introduced in these projects.},
	keywords = {github, license},
	author = {Vendome, Christopher}
}
@conference {1259,
	title = {Towards an Openness Rating System for Open Source Software},
	booktitle = {2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2010)},
	year = {2010},
	pages = {1 - 8},
	publisher = {IEEE},
	organization = {IEEE},
	address = {Honolulu, Hawaii, USA},
	abstract = {Many open source software projects are not very open to third party developers. The point of open source is to enable anyone to fix bugs or add desired capabilities without holding them hostage to the original developers. This principle is important because an open source project{\textquoteright}s developers may be unresponsive or unable to meet third party needs, even if funding support for requested improvements is offered.This paper presents a simple rating system for evaluating the openness of software distributions. The rating system considers factors such as platform portability, documentation, licensing, and contribution policy. Several popular open source products are rated in order to illustrate the efficacy of the rating system.},
	keywords = {alice, case study, contribution, documentation, freespire, galib, latex, license, linux, linux kernel, mediaportal, openness, openoffice, opensolaris, rating, unicon},
	isbn = {978-1-4244-5509-6},
	doi = {10.1109/HICSS.2010.405},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/10-07-04.pdf},
	author = {Bein, Wolfgang and Jeffery, Clinton}
}
@conference {706,
	title = {Retrieving Open Source Software Licenses},
	booktitle = {OSS2006: Open Source Systems (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing},
	year = {2006},
	pages = {35 - 46},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	abstract = {Open Source Software maintenance and reuse require identifying and comprehending the applied software licenses. This paper first characterizes software maintenance, and open source software (OSS) reuse which are particularly relevant in this context. The information needs of maintainers and reusers can be supported by reverse engineering tools at different information retrieval levels. The paper presents an automated license retrieval approach called ASLA. User needs, system architecture, tool features, and tool evaluation are presented. The implemented tool features support identifying source file dependencies and licenses in source files, and adding new license templates for identifying licenses. The tool is evaluated against another tool for license information extraction. ASLA requires the source code as available input but is otherwise not limited to OSS. It supports the same programming languages as GCC. License identification coverage is good and the tool is extendable.
},
	keywords = {gaim, license, license analysis, maintenance, mozilla, reuse},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34226-5_4},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Retrieving\%20Open\%20Source\%20Software\%20Licenses.pdf},
	author = {Tuunanen, Timo and Koskinen, Jussi and K{\"a}rkk{\"a}inen, Tommi}
}
@conference {789,
	title = {Legal issues of Open Source Software},
	booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems },
	year = {2005},
	pages = {320-321},
	abstract = {From the legal standpoint, Open Source amounts to distributing rights and obligations in software license agreements in such a way, that they would (1) both grant users control over the program and (2) facilitate the sharing of improvements. The Open Source idea aims at reversing the process usually referred to as proprietary licensing and equaling the rights of the users with these of the authors. To some extent, it attempts to destroy monopolies created by copyright laws and to prevent them to arise again. There is much in the discussion on the legal issues of Open Source. The first voices came from the programmers who started the movement.},
	keywords = {cooperation, copyright law, freedom, intellectual property, legal issue, license, open source software},
	url = {http://pascal.case.unibz.it/handle/2038/974},
	author = {Siewicz, Krzysztof}
}
@conference {899,
	title = {Stopping spyware at the gate: a user study of privacy, notice and spyware},
	booktitle = {2005 Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security},
	year = {2005},
	month = {07/2005},
	pages = {43-52},
	publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
	organization = {Association for Computing Machinery},
	address = {Pittsburgh, PA},
	keywords = {agreement,, and, Aspects,, Design,, end, EULA,, Experimentation,, Factors,, Human, Legal, license, notice,, of, privacy,, security, service,, spyware,, terms, ToS,, usability,, user},
	isbn = {1-59593-178-3 },
	author = {N. Good and Dhamija, R. and J. Grossklags and D. Thaw and Aronowitz, S. and D. Mulligan and J. Konstan}
}
@article {flosswp63,
	title = {The Scope of Open Source Licensing},
	journal = {Journal of Law, Economics and Organization},
	volume = {21},
	number = {1},
	year = {2002},
	month = {2005},
	pages = {20-56},
	abstract = {This paper is an initial exploration of the determinants of open source license choice. It first enumerates the various considerations that should figure into the licensor{\textquoteright}s choice of contractual terms, in particular highlighting how the decision is shaped not just by the preferences of the licensor itself, but also by that of the community of developers. The paper then presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of license choice using the SourceForge database, a compilation of nearly 40,000 open source projects. Projects geared toward end-users tend to have restrictive licenses, while those oriented toward developers are less likely to do so. Projects that are designed to run on commercial operating systems and those geared towards the Internet are less likely to have restrictive licenses. Finally, projects that are likely to be attractive to consumers such as games are more likely to have restrictive licenses.},
	keywords = {developers, license, licenses, permissive, restrictive, sourceforge},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/lernertirole2.pdf},
	author = {Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole}
}
