Quickstart
This section is intended to give users a quick way to get started using the tool. For additional details, see the full reference for the topic.
The primary steps in using the FOSSology tool are:
- Upload a file or files
- Check the Job Queue for information about the upload
- Read the License Analysis Report for information about the file(s)
Uploading Files
The steps to upload a file for analysis are:
- Choose/Create a folder to contain the file
- Click on the “Operations” tab
- Click on the “Upload File...” button
- Fill in the resulting “Upload a File” form & click the “Begin Upload” button.
Interpreting the Job Queue
Jobs queued by the scheduler can be viewed in the UI by selecting “Show Jobs” from the left window.
Interpreting the License Analysis Report
The license analysis report provides information on the software licenses detected by FOSSology.
When you select a project and click on the license tab, you are shown a histogram of the discovered licenses. Each type of license is listed as well as the number of files containing the license. For example:
| Count | License |
|---|---|
| 1299 | Apache Software License 2.0 reference |
| 13 | Intel-OSL |
| 10 | Phrase |
| 6 | Apache Software License 2.0 |
| 3 | BSD UCRegents 2 |
| 2 | RSA MD5 |
| 1 | MIT (oldstyle) |
| 1 | Apache Software License 1.1 |
Each of the licenses has a distinct name and identifies a distinct license. However, “Phrase” is a catch-all category. License that are unknown by the analysis system are usually identified by common phrases, such as “is distributed under...”. Phrases that are potentially associated with licenses are listed the Phrase category.
You can click on each of the license types and see a list of files that contain the license.
| License: Intel-OSL | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. | 98% | pcretest.c |
| 2. | 97% | COPYING |
| 3. | 97% | LICENCE |
| 4. | 97% | pcre.hw |
| 5. | 97% | pcre.in |
| 6. | 97% | pcregrep.c |
| 7. | 95% | internal.h |
| 8. | 95% | ucptypetable.c |
| 9. | 94% | pcre.c |
| 10. | 93% | study.c |
| 11. | 91% | maketables.c |
| 12. | 91% | printint.c |
| 13. | 89% | dftables.c |
The files are ordered by the percentage of match. In the example, the file “COPYING” has a section of text that includes a 97% match with a section of the Intel-OSL license. By clicking on the file name, you can see the actual text of the file with the matching license text highlighted.
At the top of the file contents is an index table that lists the licenses in the file, a link to the instance (click on “view”), a link to the actual license (click on “ref”), and a color – each identified license is color coded. Items without a “ref” denote Phrases that are identified as possible license text.
The actual matched text within the document are highlighted to match the license key. Words that are not included in the match are not highlighted. In this example, the attribution of the license has been changed to say “University of Cambridge” and the owner’s name has been replaced with “COPYRIGHT OWNER”. Outside of these specific changes, the license text matches the Intel-OSL license.
