This comparison only covers

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both sour ...

s which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("s ...

, the

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation, with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The organization w ...

, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.

FOSS licenses

FOSS stands for "Free and Open Source Software". There is no one universally agreed-upon definition of FOSS software and various groups maintain approved lists of licenses. The

(OSI) is one such organization keeping a list of open-source licenses.Open source licenses - Licenses by Name
on opensource.org The

(FSF) maintains a list of what it considers free. FSF's

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, ...

and OSI's open-source licenses together are called FOSS licenses. There are licenses accepted by the OSI which are not free as per the free software definition. The open source definition allows for further restrictions like price, type of contribution and origin of the contribution, e.g. the case of the NASA Open Source Agreement, which requires the code to be "original" work. The OSI does not endorse FSF license analysis (interpretation) as per their disclaimer. The FSF's free Software definition focuses on the user's unrestricted rights to use a program, to study and modify it, to copy it, and redistribute it for any purpose, which are considered by the FSF the ''four essential freedoms''. The OSI's open-source criteria focuses on the availability of the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

and the advantages of an unrestricted and community driven development model. Yet, many FOSS licenses, like the Apache License, and all Free Software licenses allow commercial use of FOSS components.

General comparison

For a simpler comparison across the most common licenses see free-software license comparison. The following table compares various features of each license and is a general guide to the terms and conditions of each license, based on seven subjects or categories. Recent tools like the European Commissions' Joinup Licensing Assistant, makes possible the licenses selection and comparison based on more than 40 subjects or categories, with access to their SPDX identifier and full text. The table below lists the permissions and limitations regarding the following subjects: * Linking - linking of the licensed code with code licensed under a different license (e.g. when the code is provided as a

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

) * Distribution - distribution of the code to third parties * Modification - modification of the code by a licensee * Patent grant - protection of licensees from patent claims made by code contributors regarding their contribution, and protection of contributors from patent claims made by licensees * Private use - whether modification to the code must be shared with the community or may be used privately (e.g. internal use by a corporation) * Sublicensing - whether modified code may be licensed under a different license (for example a

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

) or must retain the same license under which it was provided * TM grant - use of trademarks associated with the licensed code or its contributors by a licensee In this table, " permissive" means the software has minimal restrictions on how it can be used, modified, and redistributed, usually including a warranty disclaimer. "

Copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

" means the software requires that its source code be made publicly available and that all provisions in the license be preserved in derivative works. Other licenses that don't have information:

Approvals

This table lists for each license what organizations from the FOSS community have approved itbe it as a "free software" or as an "open source" license, how those organizations categorize it, and the

license compatibility License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirement ...

between them for a combined or mixed derivative work. Organizations usually approve specific versions of software licenses. For instance, a FSF approval means that the

(FSF) considers a license to be free-software license. The FSF recommends at least " Compatible with GPL" and preferably

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

. The OSI recommends a mix of permissive and copyleft licenses, the Apache License 2.0, 2- & 3-clause

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD li ...

, GPL, LGPL,

MIT license The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license co ...

, MPL 2.0, CDDL and EPL.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Comparison Of Free And Open Source Software Licenses Debian * Free Software Foundation Free software lists and comparisons Licenses Companies' terms of service

FOSS licenses

General comparison

Approvals

See also

References