Most modern software products incorporate open-source components, requiring development teams to maintain compliance with each component's licenses. Noncompliance can have significant financial, legal, and reputational repercussions. Although some organizations may seek advice from legal practitioners to assist with licensing tasks, developers still play a key role in this process. To this end, it is essential to understand how developers approach licensing compliance tasks, the challenges they encounter, and the tools they use. This work studies these aspects of software licensing practices through a study - conducted by a joint team of software engineering and legal researchers - consisting of a survey with 58 software developers and 7 follow-up interviews. The study resulted in 13 key findings regarding the current state of practice. We discuss the implications of our findings and offer directions for future research, as well as actionable recommendations.

翻译：大多数现代软件产品都集成了开源组件，这要求开发团队必须遵守每个组件的许可协议。违反许可可能带来重大的财务、法律和声誉风险。尽管部分组织会寻求法律从业者的建议来协助处理许可事务，但开发人员在此过程中仍扮演着关键角色。为此，理解开发人员如何处理许可合规任务、他们遇到的挑战以及所使用的工具至关重要。本研究通过一项由软件工程与法律研究者联合团队开展的研究——包括对58名软件开发者的问卷调查和7次后续访谈——探讨了软件许可实践的这些方面。研究得出了关于当前实践现状的13项关键发现。我们讨论了这些发现的意义，提出了未来研究方向以及可操作的建议。