Collaboration Tool for Distributed Open Source Verification

Samsung R&D Institute Brazil (SRBR) is one of Samsung's research centers around the world. SRBR work is focused on research on software development areas. SRBR software development teams have worked in collaboration with Samsung headquarters (HQ), located at South Korea, and Brazilian outsourcing companies (SIDI Institute and other Brazilian partners). Considering the massive volume of software developed by SRBR and partners teams, there naturally has been an enormous use and contribution of open source software. The usage of open source software (OSS) by Samsung and its research centers follows a process to ensure that all use is compliant with OSS licenses. This experience report describes OSKB (Open Source Knowledge Base) tool, a distributed collaboration Web application fully integrated with a tracking issue system, currently used by SRBR teams involved with software development for avoiding duplicated work and improving knowledge sharing among SRBR internal and partners teams. The main reasons behind OSKB development were automating the first step of OSS licenses verification activity reducing duplicated work, serving as a knowledge base of OSS analysis, reducing the time spent in back office operations related with OSS usage and mitigating OSS usage compliance risks.