Licensing
In-depth guides and analysis on licensing from the Safeguard engineering team.
26 articles
Open Source License Scanning: How It Actually Works
How open source license scanning identifies oss license obligations across a dependency tree, and what open source compliance management software actually automates versus flags for review.
What Is License Contamination?
One GPL dependency in the wrong place can put your proprietary source code under copyleft obligations. How license contamination happens and how to prevent it.
MIT License and Commercial Use: What You Can and Cannot Do
The MIT License lets you use, modify, and sell software commercially with almost no restrictions — as long as you keep the copyright notice. Here is exactly what that permits and requires.
The Apache License, Version 2.0: What It Actually Requires
What the Apache License, Version 2.0 actually obligates you to do — attribution, notice files, and the patent grant most summaries skip.
Open Source License Comparison: MIT, Apache, GPL, BSD
MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL, and BSD dominate the open source ecosystem but differ sharply on patent grants and copyleft obligations — here's a side-by-side comparison.
GNU GPL Explained: Versions, Obligations, and Compatibility
GPLv2 vs GPLv3, what the copyleft obligation actually requires, why 'GPLv2 or later' matters, and which licenses you can and cannot combine with the GPL.
The BSD License: Full Form and Terms Explained
The BSD license full form is the Berkeley Software Distribution license — a permissive open-source license with fewer obligations than the GPL family, and a few variants worth telling apart.
Apache License 2.0 Explained: Permissions, Conditions, and Commercial Use
What the Apache License 2.0 lets you do, what it requires (attribution, NOTICE, change marking), and why its patent grant matters for commercial software.
GNU AGPL vs GPL: When AGPL Actually Applies
The GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 closes the network-use loophole that GPL leaves open — here's exactly when that difference matters for your codebase.
Copyleft Licenses: Strong vs Weak, and Why It Matters
Copyleft licenses aren't one category — the gap between GPL-style strong copyleft and LGPL-style weak copyleft decides whether linking a library obligates you to open your own code.
The GNU General Public License, Explained in Plain Terms
A GPL license explained without legal jargon: what copyleft actually requires, when it triggers, and what it means for a codebase that links against GPL-licensed code.
Node.js License: What Actually Applies to Your App
Node.js itself ships under a permissive MIT-style license, but your app's real license exposure comes from the hundreds of npm packages riding along with it.