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Open License
A free license or open license is a license that allows copyrighted work to be reused, modified, and redistributed. These uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or other Intellectual property (IP) laws. The term broadly covers '' free content licenses'' and ''open-source licenses'', also known as '' free software licenses''. History The invention of the term "free license" and the focus on the rights of users were connected to the sharing traditions of the hacker culture of the 1970s public domain software ecosystem, the social and political free software movement (since 1980) and the open source movement (since the 1990s). These rights were codified by different groups and organizations for different domains in Free Software Definition, Open Source Definition, Debian Free Software Guidelines, Definition of Free Cultural Works and The Open Definition. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
License
A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreement between those parties. In the case of a license issued by a government, the license is obtained by applying for it. In the case of a private party, it is by a specific agreement, usually in writing (such as a lease or other contract). The simplest definition is "A license is a promise not to sue", because a license usually either permits the licensed party to engage in an illegal activity, and subject to prosecution, without the license (e.g. Fishing license, fishing, Driver's license, driving an automobile, or operating a Broadcast license, broadcast radio or television station), or it permits the licensed party to do something that would violate the rights of the licensing party (e.g. make copie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Open Definition
The Open Definition (formerly Open Knowledge Definition) is published by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) to define openness for any type of data, content, or other knowledge. The definition's stated purpose is to " akeprecise the meaning of ‘open’ with respect to knowledge". Although it draws philosophically from both the open-source and free software movements, the Open Definition prioritizes license compatibility over copyleft principles requiring derivative works to be released under a free license. The Open Definition contains requirements for content licenses to be considered open licenses, and the OKF maintains a list of compatible licenses. The definition also requires open access, machine readability, and the use of open formats. The OKF's Open Software Service Definition is derived from the Open Definition. Background The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a United-Kingdom-based NGO that began work on the definition in 2006. According to the OKF, the Open D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grant (law)
A grant, in law, is a transfer of property, generally from a person or other entity giving the property (the grantor) to a person or entity receiving the property (the grantee). Historically, a grant was a transfer by Deed (law), deed of that which could not be passed by Livery#Sue one's livery, livery, an act evidenced by letters patent under the Great Seal of the Realm, Great Seal, granting something from the king to a subject, and a technical term made use of in deeds of conveyance of lands to import a transfer. Though the word "grant" was originally made use of, in treating of conveyances of interests in lands, to denote a transfer by deed of that which could not be passed by livery, and was applied only to incorporeal hereditaments, it became a generic term, applicable to the transfer of all classes of real property. As distinguished from a mere license, a grant passes some estate or interest, corporeal or incorporeal, in the lands which it embraces; can only he made by an i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free And Open-source Software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free software and open-source software. The rights guaranteed by FOSS originate from the "Four Essential Freedoms" of '' The Free Software Definition'' and the criteria of '' The Open Source Definition''. All FOSS can have publicly available source code, but not all source-available software is FOSS. FOSS is the opposite of proprietary software, which is licensed restrictively or has undisclosed source code. The historical precursor to FOSS was the hobbyist and academic public domain software ecosystem of the 1960s to 1980s. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software License
A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Since the 1970s, software copyright has been recognized in the United States. Despite the copyright being recognized, most companies prefer to sell licenses rather than copies of the software because it enables them to enforce stricter terms on redistribution. Very few purchasers read any part of the license, initially shrink-wrap contracts and now most commonly encountered as clickwrap or browsewrap. The enforceability of this kind of license is a matter of controversy and is limited in some jurisdictions. Service-level agreements are another type of software license where the vendor agrees to provide a level of service to the purchaser, often backed by financial penalties. Copyleft is a type of license that mandates derivative works to be licensed under the license's terms. Copyleft licenses exist for free and open-source software, but also for commercial applications like the Ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open-source Licenses
Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in the Open Source Definition. After 1980, the United States began to treat software as a literary work covered by copyright law. Richard Stallman founded the free software movement in response to the rise of proprietary software. The term "open source" was used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), founded by free software developers Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond. "Open source" emphasizes the strengths of the open development model rather than software freedoms. While the goals behind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Software Licenses
A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software (or free and open-source software) as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms. Comparison Free-software licenses provide risk mitigation against different legal threats or behaviors that are seen as potentially harmful by developers: History Pre-1980s In the early times of software, sharing of software and source code was common in certain communities, for instance academic institutions. Before the US Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pirate Parties
Pirate Party is a label adopted by various political parties worldwide that share a set of values and policies focused on civil rights in the digital age. The fundamental principles of Pirate Parties include freedom of information, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, digital rights and internet freedom. The first Pirate Party, initially named "Piratpartiet", was founded in Sweden in 2006 by Rick Falkvinge, and the movement has since expanded to over 60 countries. Ideology Central to their vision is the defense of free access to and sharing of knowledge, and opposition to intellectual monopolies. This position fits theoretically into the "knowledge commons" framework, developed from Elinor Ostrom's studies on the governance of the commons and later applied to the digital domain by scholars such as Yochai Benkler and Lawrence Lessig. They therefore advocate for copyright and patent laws reform, aiming to make them more flexible and fairer, foster innovation and balan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission. As examples, the works of William Shakespeare, Ludwig van Beethoven, Miguel de Cervantes, Zoroaster, Lao Zi, Confucius, Aristotle, L. Frank Baum, Leonardo da Vinci and Georges Méliès are in the public domain either by virtue of their having been created before copyright existed, or by their copyright term having expired. Some works are not covered by a country's copyright laws, and are therefore in the public domain; for example, in the United States, items excluded from copyright include the formulae of Classical mechanics, Newtonian physics and cooking recipes. Other works are actively dedicated by their authors to the public domain (see waiver) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the eighth List of most-visited websites, most visited website in the world. It also hosts fourteen related open collaboration projects, and supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software which underpins them all. The foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales, as a non-profit way to fund Wikipedia and other wiki projects which had previously been hosted by Bomis, Wales' for-profit company. The Wikimedia Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki-based content in languages across the world. The foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the projects themselves. Instead, this is done by v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anticopyright
Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implementations, the benefits of which they claim do not justify the policy's costs to society. They advocate for changing the current system, though different groups have different ideas of what that change should be. Some call for remission of the policies to a previous state—copyright once covered few categories of things and had shorter term limits—or they may seek to expand concepts like fair use that allow permissionless copying. Others seek the abolition of copyright itself. Opposition to copyright is often a portion of platforms advocating for broader social reform. For example, Lawrence Lessig, a free-culture movement speaker, advocates for loosening copyright law as a means of making sharing information easier or addressing the or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
