Shane Coughlan (Opendawn) and Armijn Hemel (Loohuis Consulting) published an article on LWN.net.

“This article examines a field called compliance engineering. Compliance engineering was pioneered by technical experts who wanted to address misuses of software, and was made famous by gpl-violations.org, FSF, and similar organizations correcting Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) license violations. The field has grown into a commercial segment with companies like Blackduck Software and consultancy firms like Loohuis Consulting offering formal services to third parties.

Rather than attempting to examine compliance engineering in all market segments and under all conditions, this article will focus on explaining some of the tools and skills required to undertake due diligence activities related to licensing and binary code in the embedded industry. It is based on the GPL Compliance Engineering Guide, which in turn is based on the experience of engineers contributing to the gpl-violations.org project.”

You can read the full text on LWN.net.

For more information about FOSS compliance engineering in the embedded industry and Opendawn’s services in this area please contact us.