LiCoVer: LLM-Powered Automated OSS License Compliance Verification

Integrating open-source software (OSS) components introduces significant legal risks due to license non-compliance, including litigation, financial penalties, and reputational damage. These risks escalate in modern dependency networks where projects inherit licenses from hundreds of dependencies, frequently resulting in license incompatibilities. To address these challenges, we present LiCoVer, an LLM-powered framework for automated license compliance verification. Our approach constructs a dependency graph and derives its corresponding license tree. We then utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) to extract critical license terms, while employing established compatibility algorithms to determine license compatibility (both secondary and combinative) across the tree. Additionally, we leverage LLMs’ reasoning capabilities to provide AI-guided license recommendations based on developer preferences. By automating license term extraction and compatibility assessment while offering intelligent license selection support, our framework significantly reduces legal risks and streamlines compliant OSS integration.