And terms of use for that license have real consequences. Open source software developers use licenses to explain usage guidelines, such as whether a program can be used in commercial environments. “The only way to actually make your code open source and freely available is to attach a license to it” ( Ars Technica). This is because developers who merely publish their source code don’t make it open. In particular, every one of those 2.2 trillion software components comes with some kind of legal agreement. This expansion has caught many projects and organizations off-guard. We’re seeing substantial growth in the top four development languages:Ĭomponent download increase over 2020 by languageĮach one of these downloads represents a software development team requesting an open source software package. In fact, this pace has only increased over time and shows no signs of slowing down. That may seem like the peak of a trend, but this is not a unique year. The numbers are surprising – our 2021 data suggests open source package or component downloads totaling 2.2 trillion from third-party software ecosystems. But the popularity of this approach is rarely understood.

Today, developers around the world use open source tools to make their lives easier and accelerate the pace of innovation. But the wide use of openly developed component software has only been normalized in the last ten years. The use of 3rd party software to power development is nothing new.

You need automation to help manage this situation and avoid litigation. At the same time, companies are allowing licenses they should avoid and not complying fully with included terms. These tools come with unique requirements that are becoming unwieldy to resolve. Organizations are absorbing a huge amount of open source component software.

Open source license manager software