license-compliance
Safeguard articles tagged "license-compliance" — guides, analysis, and best practices for software supply chain and application security.
58 articles
How Snyk keeps its license classifications aligned with t...
How Snyk detects, normalizes, and categorizes open source license metadata against the SPDX License List to power its license compliance policies.
License Compliance Debt: The Quiet Risk Growing Alongside...
Open source license debt is compounding as fast as CVE backlogs, but has no CVSS score, no patch, and no dashboard — until an audit, M&A deal, or lawsuit forces the issue.
Writing an Open Source Software Policy
An open source software policy is what turns ad-hoc dependency choices into a governed, auditable process — here's what to actually put in one.
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.
BSD 3-Clause License Explained
The BSD 3-clause license is one of the most permissive open source licenses in wide use — here's what its three conditions actually require and how it differs from MIT and Apache 2.0.
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.
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.
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.
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.