open-source-licenses
Safeguard articles tagged "open-source-licenses" — guides, analysis, and best practices for software supply chain and application security.
14 articles
Software Licensing, and Why It Is a Supply Chain Problem
Software licensing is the legal layer of your dependency tree, and getting it wrong carries real risk. Here is what the term covers and how open source licenses sneak into your product.
Software Licensing Options Explained: A Security and Compliance Guide
Your software licensing options fall into a handful of families, and each one carries obligations that show up in audits. Here is how to read a license before it reads you.
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.
How Does Software Licensing Work? A Practical Guide for Developers
Software licensing works by granting usage rights under specific terms. Here is how open-source and commercial licenses differ, and how to stay compliant in your dependency tree.
Can You Use Apache 2.0 and MIT Licensed Code Commercially?
Yes, you can use Apache License 2.0 and MIT licensed code in commercial products. Here is exactly what each license requires from you, and where teams still get it wrong.
Types of Open Source Licenses
A breakdown of permissive, copyleft, and source-available license types—MIT, GPL, AGPL, SSPL—and why misclassified licenses create hidden supply chain risk.
Types of Software License Agreements: A Practical Map
A working map of the types of software license agreements you will actually encounter, from proprietary EULAs to copyleft open source, and what each one obligates you to do.
The MIT License, Summarized: What It Permits and Requires
A plain-English MIT license summary: the one condition it imposes, the freedoms it grants, and the compliance step teams still manage to miss.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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