Open Source License Obligations Checklists even better now

By: Carsten Emde

Import the checklists to other tools, create context diffs and merged lists

Imagine you have decided on an Open Source project that you want to use in an embedded system and have just discovered that 20 different licenses are used in it. You may be familiar with OSADL's Open Source License Obligations Checklists and know that you can quickly find out which license obligations must be fulfilled for an individual license. But the idea that you now have to study 20 checklists, sum up all obligations and ignore duplicates is not exactly inspiring. And you say to yourself that it should actually be possible to automatically create a cumulative checklist ...

... yes, and that's exactly what you can do now that we have completed a converter from checklist to JSON format. Simply select the appropriate licenses, click on "Create and download cumulative checklist" and you'll have everything you need. And there's a bonus: Since the JSON format is supported by a number of tools, the checklists can now be imported into such tools. This makes it possible, for example, for a scanning tool to immediately provide a list of obligations together with the licenses found. By the way: If you want to use the OSADL Open Source License Obligations Checklists, you need an individual account for legal reasons. If you don't have one yet, we will be happy to set one up for you. That's free. Simply send us a short request via email or contact us otherwise.

In the above short example the four licenses PNG Reference Library version 2, libtiff, MIT and SSH OpenSSH were selected. After clicking on a button labeled "Generate and download merged checklist" below the original checklists table on the OSADL checklists page, the below given accumulated checklist was then created and displayed on screen in JSON format. It may be copied to clipboard and downloaded for further processing.

This JSON document would look like in the original checklist "language" as follows:

USE CASE Source code delivery
    YOU MUST NOT
        Misrepresent Authorship
        Promote
    YOU MUST
        Forward License text
        Provide Copyright notices
        Provide Copyright notices In Documentation
        Provide License text
        Provide License text In Documentation
        Provide Warranty disclaimer
    IF Software modification
        YOU MUST Provide Modification notice
        YOU MUST NOT Misrepresent Modified work
        IF Modified work Is Protocol incompatible
            YOU MUST NOT Use "ssh" OR "Secure Shell" In Name
USE CASE Binary delivery
    YOU MUST
        Forward License text
        Provide Copyright notices
        Provide Copyright notices In Documentation
        Provide License text
        Provide License text In Documentation
        Provide Warranty disclaimer
    YOU MUST NOT
        Misrepresent Authorship
        Promote
    IF Software modification
        YOU MUST Provide Modification notice
        IF Modified work Is Protocol incompatible
            YOU MUST NOT Use "ssh" OR "Secure Shell" In Name
COPYLEFT CLAUSE No
PATENT HINTS No

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