Compliance Resiliency

OSS License Compliance

Managing Complex Open-Source Obligations at Scale: Automate OSS component discovery, SBOM generation, and license compliance to eliminate legal risk and protect your software supply chain.

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Open-source licensing complexity increases yearly. Organizations use hundreds of OSS components with different license obligations: permissive licenses (MIT, Apache, BSD), copyleft licenses (GPL, LGPL, AGPL), and weak copyleft variants. Transitive dependencies compound the problem—developers pull in libraries without reviewing license terms. Rights holders pursue legal action against organizations violating license obligations. Consequences include injunctions, forced source disclosure, and €50K to €5M+ settlements.

The OSS Licensing Nightmare

  • Hundreds of OSS components with different license obligations
  • Permissive (MIT, Apache), copyleft (GPL, AGPL), weak copyleft (LGPL, MPL)
  • Transitive dependencies: libraries pull in unknown components
  • Rights holders sue for license violations and source code disclosure
  • Consequences: injunctions, forced disclosure, €50K to €5M+ settlements

What Compliance Requires

Discovery: Find All OSS Components

  • Automated scanning of repositories, containers, artifacts
  • Transitive dependency resolution
  • Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation
  • Result: Know what open-source you ship

Tracking: Maintain Accurate License Records

  • License type per component (permissive vs. copyleft)
  • Attribution requirements and copyright notices
  • License compatibility across components
  • Result: Know your license obligations

Enforcement: Meet All Obligations

  • Block components with incompatible licenses
  • Ensure proper attribution in distributions
  • Flag copyleft components requiring source disclosure
  • Result: Never violate license terms

Three Critical Capabilities

Effective OSS license compliance requires three capabilities:

Discovery means identifying all open-source components across repositories, container images, build artifacts, and deployed applications. Automated SCA tools scan codebases, resolve transitive dependencies, and generate comprehensive SBOMs. Supply chain visibility is critical—many organizations discover they're shipping GPL-licensed code they didn't know existed.

Tracking means maintaining accurate records of license types, attribution requirements, copyright holders, and compatibility constraints. Integrate scanning tools, dependency managers, and license databases into centralized platforms. As dependencies change, tracking systems flag new obligations and identify license conflicts or copyleft contamination risks.

Enforcement means ensuring all license obligations are met before distribution. Policy enforcement can block builds containing blacklisted licenses, require approval for copyleft components, or automatically generate attribution notices and NOTICE files. Compliance becomes continuous through CI/CD integration, not merely at release time.

Business Benefits Beyond Risk Mitigation

OSS license compliance includes:

  • Legal protection: Avoid litigation, injunctions, and forced source disclosure
  • M&A readiness: Clean SBOMs accelerate due diligence and valuations
  • Customer trust: Demonstrate supply chain transparency and security
  • Developer velocity: Pre-approved component catalogs speed development

Quick Wins

  • Generate SBOMs for all products: Immediate supply chain visibility
  • Establish license policies: Block high-risk copyleft in proprietary code
  • Automate attribution: Generate NOTICE files automatically

Real-World Risk Impact

Organizations typically discover 70-90% of their codebase consists of open-source components, many with unreviewed licenses. SBOM analysis identifies copyleft contamination risks and license conflicts before distribution. Visibility into OSS usage by product enables informed decisions about component selection.