Open-source license
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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).
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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 vs. free software.
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
- Academic Free License
- Apache Software License
- Apple Public Source License
- Artistic License
- Common Public License
- Eiffel Forum License
- BSD 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
- MIT License
- MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW License)
- Motosoto License
- Mozilla Public License 1.0 (MPL)
- Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL 1.1)
- NetHack General Public License
- Nokia Open Source License
- Open Software License
- Open Group Test Suite License
- Python license
- Python Software Foundation License
- Q Public License (QPL)
- Ricoh Source Code Public License
- Sleepycat License
- Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
- Sun Public License (SPL)
- Vovida Software License v. 1.0
- W3C License
- X.Net License
- zlib-libpng license
- Zope Public License
Non-OSI source licenses
Licenses which are source-available but not OSI-Certified include:
See also
External links
- The Open Source Initiative (http://www.opensource.org/)
- Open Source Licensing (http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/21/0239245) — 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 (http://pgl.yoyo.org/lqr/) — 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 (http://zooko.com/license_quick_ref.html).