Date
1 - 8 of 8
Open source licensing discovery
|
Sihem Ben Sassi
Dear Spdx-legal community, Improving open source licensing discovery and automating licenses processing are shared aims. From my side,and as first step, I am coming up with a unified description model, supported by a tool (OSLiFe-DiSC) helping in discovering, selecting and comparing open source licenses. As legal experts and knowledgeable users in this field, you are the ones whose feedback is very important to measure and prove the added value as well as to identify improvement requirements / opportunities. So please: 1- See demo: https://youtu.be/VwzBq7XBTvk 2- Access the tool and use: https://sihem.pythonanywhere.com 3- Give your feedback (yes, please!): https://cutt.ly/G0eiq92 If you need more information about extracted legal terms and their definition, please refer to the manuscript available at https://cutt.ly/P0wsuAvMany thanks in advance. With Kind Regards, Ph.D, HDR in computer sciences |
|
|
|
Pierre Tardy
Hi Sihem, Thanks for sharing your work with the community, and congrats for the release! Here are a few comments that come to my mind: - I don't see any reference in your paper about https://tldrlegal.com/ which is clearly a prior art to your project, and which provides very similar feature categorisation of the licenses (with less detail, though). - As an engineer I like the idea of featurisation of open source licenses. I think legal people don't like it too much as far as I understand, the interpretation of licenses depends on the context and local laws. probably legal experts here can give more input - I think License featurisation is also a useful tool for Commercial/Proprietary licenses that companies are working with, to make sure engineers have at least a first level of understanding of what they can or can't do with code that partners are sharing with us. - The web site of the tool shows it is licensed under AGPLv3 which as far as I understand requires you to provide the source code. I couldn't find any link or reference to it. I would be interested in diving into your data model - Your paper has a table in the end describing the list of features with a bit more explanation on what each feature means. I think it would be valuable to make that available as well on the web site. Regards, Pierre Le jeu. 15 déc. 2022 à 21:56, Sihem Ben Sassi <sihem.bensassi@...> a écrit :
|
|
|
|
Jonas Smedegaard
Quoting Pierre Tardy (2022-12-16 09:51:52)
- The web site of the tool shows it is licensed under AGPLv3 which as farAGPL defines requirements for a licensor - i.e. anyone else than the author. That said, I am also interested in access to the code - especially since it is freely licensed (thanks for your contribution to Free software!). - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private |
|
|
|
Sihem Ben Sassi
Hi Pierre and Jonas, Thank you Pierre for answering the feedback questionnaire. I call the other spdx-legal members to do so! Below are my answers.
The
manuscript I shared is intended to give more details about extracted
(legal terms) features. The main paper discusses in detail the state of
the art and existing tools. It also presents the methodology I followed
to come up with the description model. I will share it as soon as I
finish with the last section (evaluation section), which depends on
feedback I am collecting now. Still I need more participation. I hope more members give their feedback.
That's
why I share it here with the legal community. We tried to be objective
when extracting features from licenses texts. However, I have to
highlight that the description of the licenses through features is not
intended to replace the original text of the license. It is intended to
be the entry door as it gives an idea about what terms are dealt with by
the license, and helps in guiding the selection. But the final decision
is the responsibility of the software owner.
I have added the definition as tooltip text in the features tree. Surely,
I have to add a help page with the definitions and how to use the tool.
Thank you for the remark.
it is freely licensed (thanks for your contribution to Free software!). A previous version is already hosted in github. I still have to do some tasks (i. e. finishing and verifying the readme, updating). I will give the link in a few days. Kind Regards, Sihem Le ven. 16 déc. 2022 à 16:54, Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@...> a écrit : Quoting Pierre Tardy (2022-12-16 09:51:52) |
|
|
|
Henrik Sandklef
Hello
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Thanks for sharing. Can you compare your work to OSADL's checklists[0]? Is there a way to compare two licenses via a call to your server? Is there a way to fetch the data (JSON, txt...)? Is the data /h [0] * https://www.osadl.org/OSADL-Open-Source-License-Checklists.oss-compliance-lists.0.html * example: https://www.osadl.org/fileadmin/checklists/unreflicenses/LGPL-2.1-or-later.txt On 2022-12-15 21:56, Sihem Ben Sassi wrote:
Dear Spdx-legal community, |
|
|
|
Sihem Ben Sassi
Dear Henrick, Sorry for the late answer. I was very disappointed as people are interested in the web tool and the document I shared, but they haven't collaborated (in return) by taking the survey. I planned to answer you few day later, but I missed that. Compared to Osadl, we use more features. However, Osdl gives more details or you let's say organize features differently (by case), while we encompass in the same model everything and the license description values will be different from one OSL to another. As I am a researcher (Software engineer + Ph.D, faculty member), everything will be accessible through the research papers once accepted. Thank you again for your interest. Kind Regards, Sihem Le mar. 3 janv. 2023 à 12:39, Henrik Sandklef <hesa@...> a écrit : Hello |
|
|
|
Patrice-Emmanuel SCHMITZ
Interesting tool! Question: Which of your license features covers that according to the license, "distribution" includes providing remote access or SaaS? Ever visited the joinup tool ? Le jeu. 15 déc. 2022 à 21:56, Sihem Ben Sassi <sihem.bensassi@...> a écrit :
|
|
|
|
Sihem Ben Sassi
Sorry for the "Reply" instead of "Reply all". The answer to
Patrice-Emmanuel's question may interest other members. Please find it below: ---------- Forwarded message --------- De : Sihem Ben Sassi <sihem.bensassi@...> Date: jeu. 16 mars 2023 à 21:43 Subject: Re: Open source licensing discovery To: Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz <pe.schmitz@...> Hi Patrice-Emmanuel, The feature [Distribution_terms > Support_of_source_code > Network_server] is the entry point to answer the question. On the remote server, the license may indicate that the code is also deployed where it is required to to have the source code [Available_as_much_as_the_code_is_deployed]. I hope this answers your question. Yes, I am aware of Joinup. Actually, I have started this work before they declare and release any information about their project. However, my work hasn't properly seen the light yet for several (personal) reasons. I will be grateful if you take the survey about the model and the tool
https://cutt.ly/G0eiq92
. Kind Regards Le mar. 14 mars 2023 à 17:25, Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz <pe.schmitz@...> a écrit :
|
|
|