Are Mobile Apps Violating Open Source Licenses?

“There are a lot of mobile apps that use open source software,
but how many of them are in compliance with open source licensing
rules? As it turns out, not very many.

“A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports
that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in
compliance. OpenLogic scanned 635 apps, including both free and
paid on the Apple App store and Google Android Marketplace. Of
those 635 scanned apps, 52 apps include Apache licensed code while
16 included GPL/LGPL licensed code.

“Both the GPL/LGPL and the Apache open source licenses require
developers to provide copies of the licenses. With the GPL/LGPL the
license also requires that developers provide a means by which
users can get the source code. OpenLogic has a scanning tool
called, OSS Deep Discovery, which helps to identify when open
source code is being used.”

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