license-compliance
Safeguard articles tagged "license-compliance" — guides, analysis, and best practices for software supply chain and application security.
91 articles
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.
What Is a Copyleft License?
Copyleft licenses grant broad rights on one condition: derivative works must stay under the same terms. Here is how strong and weak copyleft differ, and what actually triggers the obligation.
GNU GPL v3.0 Obligations, in Plain English
The GNU General Public License v3.0 explained without the legal phrasing: what you must do when you distribute software that includes GPL-3.0 code, and what triggers those obligations.
SPDX
What is SPDX? A plain-English guide to the ISO-standard SBOM and license format that documents what's really inside your software.
Software License Types: The Complete Guide
Permissive, copyleft, proprietary, and public domain: how the main software license types differ, what each one obligates you to do, and how to pick one for your project.
The GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), Explained
The GNU Affero General Public License closes the SaaS loophole in the GPL — if your service runs modified AGPL code over a network, you owe the source, even without distributing a binary.
Software Licenses Explained: A Practical Guide for Engineering Teams
Software licenses fall into a few clear buckets — permissive, copyleft, and proprietary — and knowing which is which decides what you can legally ship. Here is the map, without the legalese.
Open Source Security Management: From Policy to Pipeline
A policy document nobody enforces is theater. Here is how to turn open source rules into pipeline checks that developers can live with.
What is a Software License
A software license governs how open source code can be used, modified, and redistributed — and license conflicts now carry real contract-law risk, as the Vizio GPL case shows.
What is License Scanning
License scanning finds every open source license in your dependency tree before it becomes a legal or compliance problem — here's how it works and why it changed in 2024.
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