Open-source license
Encyclopedia : O : OP : OPE : Open-source license
An open-source license is a copyright license for computer software that makes the source code available under terms that allow for modification and redistribution without having to pay the original author. Such licenses may have additional restrictions such as a requirement to preserve the name of the authors and the copyright statement within the code. One popular (and sometimes considered normative) set of open source licenses are those approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) based on their Open Source Definition (OSD).
Comparisons
There are also shared source licenses which have some similarities with open source, but a number of critical differences make such licenses incompatible with the Open Source Definition.Some software licenses define an open standard basis and may or may not be similar to open source, like some versions of Solaris and PGP.
The Free Software Foundation has related but distinct criteria for evaluating whether or not a license qualifies a program as free software. See Free software license and Open source license. Likewise, the Debian project has its own criteria, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which in many ways was a precursor to the Open Source Definition.
OSI approved licenses
Software in the public domain (that is, with no copyright license at all), meets those criteria as long as all source code is made available, and is therefore recognized by the OSI and entitled to use their service mark. In addition, OSI has approved the following licenses as of 2005:| width="" align="" valign="" style="padding-left:;"|
- Academic Free License
- Adaptive Public License (APL)
- Apache Software License
- Apple Public Source License
- Artistic License
- Attribution Assurance Licenses
- BSD License
- Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License
- Common Development and Distribution License
- Common Public License
- CUA Office Public License
- EU DataGrid Software License
- Eclipse Public License
- Educational Community License
- Eiffel Forum License
- Entessa Public License
- Fair License
- Frameworx License
- GNU General Public License (GPL)
- GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
- Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer
- IBM Public License
- Intel Open Source License
- Jabber Open Source License
- Lemur Toolkit & Indri Search Engine
- Lucent Public License
- MIT License
- MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW License)
- Motosoto License
- Mozilla Public License (MPL) 1.0 and 1.1
- NASA Open Source Agreement
- Naumen Public License
- NetHack General Public License
- Nokia Open Source License
- OCLC Research Public License
- Open Group Test Suite License
- Open Software License
- PHP License
- Python License
- Python Software Foundation License
- Qt Public License (QPL)
- RealNetworks Public Source License
- Reciprocal Public License
- Ricoh Source Code Public License
- Sleepycat License
- Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
- Sun Public License (SPL)
- Sybase Open Watcom Public License
- University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
- Vovida Software License v. 1.0
- W3C License
- wxWindows Library License
- X.Net License
- zlib-libpng license
- Zope Public License
Non-OSI source licenses
Licenses that are source-available but not OSI-Certified include:- HESSLA
- Solaris
- PGP
- MAME (source avalaible, but not free software because it forbids commercial use and redistribution)
See also
External links
- [Open Source Licensing] — a review and discussion of Lawrence Rosen's book Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law (ISBN 0131487876) on slashdot
- [Open Source License Quick Reference Chart] — a chart comparing various aspects of Open Source licenses, with the option to select your bias. Based on Zooko's document, [Open Source Reference for Choosing a Free Software License].
- [Understanding Open Source Software - by Red Hat's Mark Webbink, Esq.] — an excellent overview of copyright and open source.
- Discussion "[Open Source/Free Software v Commercial Licence Software]"
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