The MirOS Licence is a free content licence (for

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

and other

free cultural works The Definition of Free Cultural Works is a definition of free content from 2006. The project evaluates and recommends compatible free content licenses. History The Open Content Project by David A. Wiley in 1998 was a predecessor project which de ...

such as graphical, literal, musical, …) originated at The MirOS Project for their own publications because the

ISC license The ISC license is a permissive free software license published by the Internet Software Consortium, now called Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). It is functionally equivalent to the simplified BSD and MIT licenses, but without language d ...

used by

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking N ...

was perceived as having problems with wording and too America centric. It has strong roots in the UCB BSD licence and the Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer with a focus on modern, explicit, legible language and usability by European (except UK), specifically German, authors (while not hindering adoption by authors from other legislations). It is a

permissive {{about, , the 1970 British film, Permissive (film), the grammatical mode, Permissive mood, the flavor of software license, permissive free software licence A permissive cell or host is one that allows a virus to circumvent its defenses and replica ...

(“BSD/MIT-style”) licence. Another novelty is that this licence was specified for any kind of copyrightable work from the start; as such, it not only meets the

Open Source Definition ''The Open Source Definition'' is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark. The definition was taken from the exact text of the Debian Free ...

and

Debian Free Software Guidelines The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) is a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is a free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in Deb ...

but also the

Open Knowledge Definition Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999 * ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001 * ''Open'' (YF ...

and, in fact, has been approved by the OKFN long before OSI did. The licence has not seen formal legal review, but is listed on

ifrOSS Institut für Rechtsfragen der Freien und Open Source Software, abbreviated to ifrOSS, (English: ''Institute for legal issues regarding free and open source software'') is a German organisation that provides legal services for free software. ifrOS ...

’ licence centre webpages. 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 ...

has not formally added the licence as either a

free software licence 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) ...

or Free Documentation License to their pages, but their software directory has a category for it. The license was accepted as a free content license according to the

Free Cultural Works The Definition of Free Cultural Works is a definition of free content from 2006. The project evaluates and recommends compatible free content licenses. History The Open Content Project by David A. Wiley in 1998 was a predecessor project which de ...

definition.Licenses
on freedomdefined.org

References

External links

of the licence text
UTF-8 plain text
version
CVSweb
of the master copy of the licence text (note: ''license.template'' was the

used by OpenBSD, ''licence.template'' is the one written by Thorsten Glaser and developed for MirOS)
ifrOSS licence centre (English)
listing
Open Definition
( OKFN) listing
OSI
(

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 ...

) listing
Freedom Defined
listing
Fedora Project
listing
Genuine OS License
{{DEFAULTSORT:MirOS Licence, The Berkeley Software Distribution Free and open-source software licenses Free content licenses