Interpreting the License Group Analysis Report

The license heirarchy permits viewing individual licenses. However, it is common for individual licenses to fit into specific categories. For example, you may not care whether a license the specific license is “NCSA” or “X11”, you may simply regard them as an “MIT-style” license. Similarly, GPL version 1, version 2, and version 3 may just be grouped as “GPL”.

License groups permit categoring similar licenses. Groups also have attributes such as a name, description and color. For example, if there are some licenses that you do not like, then you can create a license group named “Bad” with the description “Licenses I don't like” and the color “Red”. Similarly, green can be used for licenses that you do like.

License groups can be associated with license or other license groups. This way, you can have subgroups called “GPL v1” and “GPL v2”, both of which are included in the “GPL” group. If you modify the licenses within a subgroup (e.g., add a license to the “GPL v2” group), then parent groups immediately inherit the change (the “GPL” group sees the addition).

Currently, there are three default license groups: Similar Text, FSF, and Fedora.

• Similar Text: These license groups are based on similar license text, but not necessarily similar legal responsibilities. (These groups make no assumptions about license requirements.) For example, the “BSD new”, “Cryptix”, and “Entessa Public License” all have similar text. They are grouped in the “BSD.new” group. The “BSD.new” and “BSD.old” groups are part of the “BSD” group. There are currently 66 default groups based on similar text.
• FSF: The Free Software Foundation has defined a set of license groups for use with the FSF. Unlike the Similar Text group, the FSF group is a legal interpretation made by the FSF. The license groups (and associated colors) are:
  • FSF GPL-Compatible Free Software Licenses (green)
  • FSF GPL-Incompatible Free Software Licenses (yellow)
  • FSF Non-Free Software Licenses (red)
  • FSF Free Documentation Licenses (green)
  • FSF Non-Free Documentation Licenses (red)
• Fedora: The Fedora Linux distribution has their own set of license categories, based on their own legal interpretation. These groups (and colors) are:
  • Fedora Good Licenses (green)
  • Fedora Unknown Licenses (yellow)
  • Fedora Bad Licenses (red)

Using the Manage Groups option (Organize » License » Manage Groups), you can create new groups, edit group properties (everything from name to which licenses are in the group), or delete groups. You can even modify the default license groups (Organize » License » Default Groups).

License colors are a little special. If you select a non-white color, then that color will be used when you view the license groups. However, if the color is white (#ffffff), then the group will inherit the colors of any subgroups. For example, if the subgroups are green, green, and red, then the top group will be a combination (a greenish-red color). While the actual color mix may not be informative, seeing that it is not one of the eight standard group colors is a clear indication of multiple colors within the subgroup.

To view which files are associated with a license group:

1. Click on the Browse tab, to display the Browse screen.
2. Select an uploaded file to view by navigating to it using the Folder Navigation and Uploads areas of the Browse screen.
3. Click on the file name of the uploaded file.
4. In the top-right micro-menu of the resulting screen, find the option called “License Groups”.
5. Select the License Groups option.

The following is an example of the License Group screen:

The resulting page shows the license group histogram on the left, and the directory listing on the right. Only license groups associated with files are shown; empty license groups are not shown. The histogram includes:

• The number of found licenses within each group.
• A ”+” next to a license group name indicates the presence of subgroups. Click on the ”+” to see the subgroups.
• The color associated with the license group is displayed. This allows you to quickly look for any important colors. For example, if you are only interested in red groups, then you can look for any red.
• Clicking on the license group name highlights all directory items that contain at least one license in the group. Similarly, clicking on the word “license” next to any directory item highlights all license groups associated with the directory item.
• Clicking on “Show” displays all files contained in the specified license group. From here, you can view individual files, or refine the search by selecting a specific license found in the license group. (The license group may contain dozens of licenses, but only specific licenses included in the match are available for refining searches.)

As with the license histogram, the directory listing includes bold and regular items. Clicking on a bold name (e.g., a directory or a container file) will shows the contents. Clicking on a regular name will show the licenses within the file.