The Linux Foundation launches the ACT project to help developers comply with open source licenses
The Linux Foundation is working to improve open source compliance by building new projects, and they have recently launched an Automated Compliance Tooling (ACT) project to integrate input into advancing open source compliance tools to improve interoperability and availability.
According to the Linux Foundation, while the use of open source code is becoming more and more popular, the use of open source code is responsible for complying with the terms of the code license, which poses challenges to the management of users and organizations.
Kate Stewart, senior director of strategy at the Linux Foundation, said, “There are numerous open source compliance tooling projects but the majority are unfunded and have limited scope to build out robust usability or advanced features. We have also heard from many organizations that the tools that do exist do not meet their current needs. Forming a neutral body under The Linux Foundation to work on these issues will allow us to increase funding and support for the compliance tooling development community.”
It is reported that the four projects that have been identified as part of the ACT are:
- FOSSology: An open source license compliance software system and toolkit allowing users to run license, copyright and export control scans from the command line. As a system, a database and web UI are provided to provide a compliance workflow. License, copyright and export scanners are tools available to help with compliance activities. FOSSology is an existing Linux Foundation project that will move under ACT.
- QMSTR: Also known as Quartermaster, this tool creates an integrated open source toolchain that implements industry best practices of license compliance management. QMSTR integrates into the build systems to learn about the software products, their sources and dependencies. Developers can run QMSTR locally to verify outcomes, review problems and produce compliance reports. By integrating into DevOps CI/CD cycles, license compliance can become a quality metric for software development. The project is being contributed to ACT by Endocode.
- SPDX Tools: Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) is an open standard for communicating software bill of material information including components, licenses, copyrights and security references. The main SPDX specification will remain separate from, yet complementary to, ACT, while the SPDX tools that meet the spec and help users and producers of SPDX documents will become part of ACT. SPDX is an existing Linux Foundation project.
- Tern: Tern is an inspection tool to find the metadata of the packages installed in a container image. It provides a deeper understanding of a container’s bill of materials so better decisions can be made about container based infrastructure, integration and deployment strategies. Tern was created by VMware, who are contributing the project to ACT, to help developers meet open source compliance requirements for containers.