LiScopeLens: An Open-Source License Incompatibility Analysis Tool Based on Scope Representation of License Terms

Ziang Liu, Xin Liu, Yingli Zhang, Zihao Zhang, Song Li, Weina Niu, Qingguo Zhou, Rui Zhou, Xiaokang Zhou

Abstract: Open-source software has emerged as a pivotal force in the advancement of information technology. Robust open-source compliance governance is essential for the sustainable and healthy growth of both open-source software and its communities. License incompatibility analysis, in particular, represents a critical challenge hindering the progress of open-source software. Traditional methods of incompatibility analysis often fail to account for diverse usage scenarios or are tailored to a limited subset of scenarios. This limitation obstructing their ability to handle the intricate compatibility arising from varied programming language interactions, leading to a high false positives. Our study embarks from an examination of license exceptions, delving into the incompatibility analysis challenges through extensive empirical research on these exceptions. We discovered that the majority of exceptions are, in fact, detectable. Leveraging this empirical insight, our research further develops the license compatibility analysis model by introducing a new, refined legal terminology representation alongside a novel method for license compatibility reasoning. This approach begins with modeling different scenarios to represent license compatibility variably. Furthermore, based on these modeling outcomes, we have designed and implemented LiScopeLens, a tool capable of discerning dependency behaviors for granular compatibility assessment, starting with binary dependencies. Our experimental findings affirm that LiScopeLens proficiently determines the license compatibility status of open-source software across various usage scenarios, demonstrating its significant practical utility.