The architecture of a software system is typically described from multiple viewpoints, such as logical, process, and development views. With the increasing use of open source components, there is a new emerging view that should be taken into account: the legality view. The legality view makes explicit the legality concerns of software architecture such as Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues and use/distribution terms of the components. These issues are particularly important, when they impose architecturally significant requirements that may influence the architecture. In this paper, we discuss the compliance of software architecture with respect to the legality aspects of open source licenses, and address the various facets of open source legality compliance. We then propose a Unified Modeling Language (UML) profile-based approach and tool to address the legality concerns of open source at the level of software architecture. The technique has been applied to express and analyze the legality view of an industrial case study.
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