Examine license implications and ratings
Any form of software that uses code or components must consider the license type that is covered.
For companies, it becomes essential to know the types of licenses for components and packages that developers choose to use.
When these include even one viral license, it requires that all software uses the same license.
Any intellectual property you might have must be made public and open source according to the terms of the viral license type.
It has a tremendous impact on the project's source code and the company that produces it.
License rating
Licenses can be rated by the impact that they have. When a package has a specific type of license, the use of the package implies keeping to the requirements of the package.
The license's impact on the downstream use of the code, components, and packages can be rated as High, Medium, and Low, depending on the copy-left, downstream, or attribution nature of the license type.
For compliance reasons, a high license rating can be considered a risk for compliance, intellectual property, and exclusive rights.
Package security
The use of components creates a software supply chain.
The resultant product is a composition of all its parts and components.
It applies to the security level of the solution as well. So, like license types, it's essential to know how secure the components being used are.
If one of the components used isn't secure, then the entire solution isn't either.