Relatore: Massimiliano Di Penta

Università del Sannio

Martedì 16 novembre 2010, ore 12:30, aula 39 del Dipartimento di Matematica

ABSTRACT:
Software licenses determine, from a legal point of view, the way in which Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) can be (re)distributed, and how component released under different licenses can be inter-connected.
This talks advocates that, when analyzing a software system for various purposes, such as doing a dependence analysis, studying software evolution, or determining the provenance a source code artifact, the content of licensing stated in a source code file or in a component is something that plays a crucial role, and that cannot be ignored.
The talk outlines how licensing can influence the direction in which source code migrates from one system towards another, how licensing can determine architectural changes in a software system, or how it can even determine the success or failure of a project or of its competitor. Also, it shows that licensing issues are bugs too, fixing which is nothing but trivial.
This opens the roads towards a multi-disciplinary research areas, involving experts in source code analysis, text mining, and laws.

BIOGRAPHY:
Massimiliano Di Penta is assistant professor at the University of Sannio, Department of Engineering, Italy. He received his laurea degree in Computer Engineering in 1999 and his PhD in Computer Engineering in 2003. His research interests include software maintenance and evolution, reverse engineering, empirical software engineering, search-based software engineering service-centric software engineering. He is author of over 130 papers appeared on journals, conferences and workshops. He serves and has served in the organizing and program committees of several conferences such as ICSE, ASE, ICSM, ICPC, CSMR, GECCO, MSR, SCAM, WCRE, and many others. He has been general chair of SCAM 2010, SSBSE 2010, WSE 2008, general co-chair of WCRE 2008, and program co-chair of SSBSE 2009, WCRE 2006 and 2007, IWPSE 2007, WSE 2007, SCAM 2006, STEP 2005, and of other workshops. He is steering committee member of ICPC, SCAM, CSMR, WCRE, IWPSE, and SSBSE. He is in the editorial board of the Empirical Software Engineering Journal edited by Springer.