Oliver Fendt

Workshop: License compliance in Debian

Over the past few years there was a significant increase of Debian being used in embedded devices. In comparison to the “classical” usage on a server or desktop machine this use case brings an additional challenge when it comes to license compliance: The installation is usually being copied and distributed (on a device) which triggers license obligations for the party doing so. Therefore the license compliance material (license texts and copyright information) of packages significantly gained importance. This workshop covers the requirements for high quality license compliance material. This also includes topics like license compatibility and how this can be checked for a given executable.

Agenda: 1) Problem statement and motivation 2) Tools (covering FOSSology, licensecheck, scancode) 3) License compatibility: What is license compatibility and how can it be checked? (covering callgraph and the OSADL license compatibility matrix) 4) Re-using license compliance material from the OSSelot project

The workshop is targeted for package maintainers and developers who are interested in license compliance. The presentation will be done in a way which gets the audience into discussion on how these methods can be used by the Debian project to provide high quality compliance material for users.

Share and re-use license compliance material with OSSelot

This presentation is about sharing and reusing publicly available FOSS compliance material, as provided by the OSSelot project (https://www.osselot.org/), which requires trust in the reliability of the data. Such trust can be fostered by ensuring high quality and consistency of the data through a standardized curation process and strict review of all contributions. Jan will talk about the curation (and reviewing) process for the OSSelot project and present the resulting material as well as several methods for reuse. The presentation is intended to serve as a basis for discussion on how OSSelot can support Debian maintainers with compliance work.