Armijn Hemel (gpl-violtions.org, Loohuis Consulting) and Shane Coughlan (Opendawn, FSFE) complete a trilogy of articles examining FOSS licensing issues and best practice on LWN.net with an outline of FOSS license compliance for companies.

This article examines a field called compliance engineering. Compliance engineering was pioneered by technical experts who wanted to address misuses of software, and was made famous by gpl-violations.org, FSF, and similar organizations correcting Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) license violations.

One of the goals of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is to become a center for education in free and open source software (FOSS) legal issues.

LWN has just published an article that examines the field of compliance engineering. It explores the tools and skills required to undertake due diligence activities related to licensing and binary code in the embedded industry. It is based on the GPL Compliance Engineering Guide, which in turn is based on the experience of engineers contributing to the gpl-violations.org project.

"...There are several ways that companies distributing GNU GPL code in Europe can get help and advice. Armijn Hemel, an engineer at the gpl-violations.org project, offers compliance services for embedded devices. FSFE's Freedom Task Force has also recently launched professional consultancy services for businesses making use of Free Software in their products..."

With the current economic recession, open source software is a route that some enterprise developers are increasingly considering as a lower-cost alterative to proprietary solutions. However, one of the potential issues with open source software adoption is license compliance—ensuring that developers and enterprises are not in violation with a particular license.

Free software license backers win key legal victory against consumer electronics vendor, with 13 other vendors set to fall in line for compliance.

What do all these licenses do for you? That's the 64 license question. Today I'm pondering if the current open source model is still valid or if it's outdated. Do we need licensing for open source software? Do we need the GPL, LGPL, APL and all the other licenses that plague...er, grace us? If your software is free and open source, why bother with a license at all?

If you’re serious about improving your company’s business practices, you probably want answers to some simple questions: “What’s important?” “What should I focus on and where do I start?” “What are best-in-class companies doing that I ought to be doing, too, and what can I learn from them?” That’s what the free Self-Assessment Checklist from The Linux Foundation’s Open Compli