Why Open Source License Management Matters

The ongoing rise in open source vulnerabilities and software supply chain attacks poses a growing threat to businesses, which heavily rely on applications for success. Between 70 and 90 percent of organizations’ use open source software, while vulnerabilities such as Log4j have significantly exposed organizations to cyberattacks.

In response, governments have made moves to protect both the public and private sectors from these threats. For example, in September 2022, U.S. Senators sought to introduce the Securing Open Source Software Act, which is intended to strengthen open source software security. If the legislation is passed, open source software will be recognized as a critical part of the country’s infrastructure and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will be tasked with assessing and mitigating the risk of all open source components that are used by federal agencies.

One important element of this is complying with the many licenses that govern every open source dependency in your code base. With more than 200 different open source licenses out there, each with its own terms and conditions, open source license management can be a tricky endeavor. However, failing to accurately track licenses is risky business, and can result in some unfortunate surprises. At best it could be just the headache of replacing a component; at worst, it could mean jeopardizing exclusive ownership over your proprietary code.

With that in mind, it’s important to understand what open source licenses you have, and how best to manage them.

Continue reading ?? https://go.mend.io/3jWhX56