License Compliance: A Legacy Problem, Reimagined with Runtime

Executive Summary

License compliance is one of the oldest disciplines in application security. For more than two decades, organizations have relied on Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools to identify copy-left licenses, produce audit trails, and reduce legal risk. The process has become standardized, almost commoditized, yet it remains indispensable. A single overlooked license can expose a company to litigation, force disclosure of proprietary code, or even derail an acquisition.

The challenge is that license compliance has not evolved with the way software is now built and deployed. Legacy SCA tools generate static, noisy reports that struggle to keep pace with modern CI/CD workflows. Compliance teams spend valuable time chasing theoretical risks in manifests, while real exposure often surfaces in production or during late-stage M&A diligence.

Kodem’s new license enforcement capability represents the first real breakthrough in years. By embedding license checks directly in SCM workflows and enriching them with runtime intelligence, Kodem brings accuracy and continuity to a discipline that has long been treated as static. For legal, compliance, product security, and deal teams, the impact is significant: fewer false positives, stronger audit defensibility, and greater confidence that license posture reflects reality, not just paperwork.

A Critical but Legacy Discipline

Open source now dominates enterprise software. More than 70 percent of modern applications are composed of open-source components . With this ubiquity comes the complexity of managing a patchwork of licenses, each with its own obligations and risks. Copy-left licenses, for example, can trigger requirements to disclose proprietary code or restrict commercial use.

Traditional SCA tools were built to manage this complexity. They generate bills of materials, flag restricted licenses, and provide reports for audits. But their model is rooted in an earlier, slower era of development. They create point-in-time snapshots that quickly go stale, and they lack the context to determine whether a dependency flagged in a manifest actually reaches production. The consequence is inefficiency for compliance teams and risk for the business.

These shortcomings become most visible during M&A diligence. Time and again, deal teams encounter late-stage surprises when static license reports do not reflect the true state of the production environment .

Legacy SCA vs. Kodem’s Runtime Approach

Legacy SCA Tools

• Static scans of manifests and registries.
• Treat all flagged dependencies as equal, regardless of production usage.
• Designed to generate lengthy audit reports.
• Point-in-time results that quickly go stale.
• Oriented toward auditors and documentation.

Kodem Runtime Enforcement

• Correlates licenses to packages actually loaded and executed.
• Filters out noise by focusing only on runtime-relevant licenses.
• Enforces policies directly in PR/MR checks and CI/CD workflows.
• Continuous enforcement across code, pipelines, and runtime.
• Delivers value across legal, security, compliance, and deal teams.

This is the first meaningful advance in license compliance in over a decade: a shift from static documentation to continuous, runtime-grounded governance.

Kodem in Action

With Kodem, license enforcement is embedded in the development lifecycle, not bolted on afterward.

At the SCM stage, teams can define policies that combine both security severity and license restrictions, automatically blocking prohibited licenses from entering the codebase.

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At the PR/MR stage, violations are flagged with precision. Developers see the offending license, the affected package, related vulnerabilities, and runtime indication. This transforms license compliance from a retrospective audit task into a proactive safeguard.

“Static licensing reports didn’t cut it for us. We needed to know our exposure is in production and with every code commit or PR. Kodem’s runtime approach finally makes license compliance practical and usable. I can see this cutting down our technical diligence time by 80-85% during M&A transactions”
— Nir Rothenberg, CISO, Rapyd

Why It Matters Across Functions

For legal and compliance teams, runtime-grounded enforcement provides defensible audit trails that can stand up in regulatory reviews or court. Instead of assumptions, they have evidence of which licenses were actually loaded in production and how violations were resolved.

For product security teams, Kodem unifies vulnerability management and license enforcement in a single system. This reduces tool sprawl and eliminates redundant workflows.

For M&A diligence teams, the benefit is immediate. Real-time visibility into license posture reduces surprises, accelerates diligence, and preserves deal value. In a market where compliance findings can stall or devalue a transaction, this shift is material.

What’s Next

This release is the foundation. Kodem will soon add license usage metrics to governance dashboards, showing not only declared licenses but those actively invoked at runtime. Enforcement will extend deeper into CI pipelines, ensuring violations are intercepted before they propagate downstream.

A Long-Standing Problem, Solved Differently

License compliance has been treated as a legacy feature for years: necessary, but uninspiring. With Kodem, it becomes strategic again. By anchoring enforcement in runtime intelligence, we provide accuracy, continuity, and context that the field has lacked for decades.

As Nir Rothenberg observed, the difference is moving from theory to practice. License compliance is no longer a checklist—it is a living, continuous process that reflects the way software is truly built and deployed.

License compliance may be legacy. But with runtime, it finally steps into the present.

References

1. Red Hat. (2024). The State of Enterprise Open Source.
2. Black Duck Audit Services. (2023). Open Source Security and Risk Analysis.
3. PwC. (2022). M&A Insights: Technology and Software Transactions.