A UML Profile Approach to Managing Open Source Software Licensing
Luoto, Antti (2013)
Luoto, Antti
2013
Tietotekniikan koulutusohjelma
Tieto- ja sähkötekniikan tiedekunta - Faculty of Computing and Electrical Engineering
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2013-03-04
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201304061107
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tty-201304061107
Tiivistelmä
There are multiple issues in utilizing third party open source components in component-based development. These issues include, for example, the legality of using open source components in different domains, or the legality of combining various components with different licenses. Infringing the the terms of a license is considered illegal. What makes this a problem, is that there are plenty of licenses, components are licensed in variety of manners and software developers don't have very well knowledge on the topic. While the mentioned issues can be partly detected or solved during the architectural design phase, there are not convenient open source tools concentrating on the issues.
This thesis is about significance of open source license management on architectural level. The chosen approach is UML based which is a novel method for license management according to an open source tool comparison made during the study.
As an outcome of the study, a new tool has been developed. OSSLI (Advanced Tools and Practices for Managing Open Source Software Licenses) tool is built on top of Eclipse based UML platform called Papyrus. The tool uses UML profiles and supporting plugins to create open source license management framework. Two case studies were conducted during the study and the results suggest that the tool is feasible in the discussed problem field.
This thesis is about significance of open source license management on architectural level. The chosen approach is UML based which is a novel method for license management according to an open source tool comparison made during the study.
As an outcome of the study, a new tool has been developed. OSSLI (Advanced Tools and Practices for Managing Open Source Software Licenses) tool is built on top of Eclipse based UML platform called Papyrus. The tool uses UML profiles and supporting plugins to create open source license management framework. Two case studies were conducted during the study and the results suggest that the tool is feasible in the discussed problem field.