List of software licenses

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computing, software that is copyrighted and licensed under a software license is done so principally under two categories of licensing schemes. There are open source / free software schemes, and there are closed source / proprietary schemes. Within these schemes are further classifications.

Not all software is licensed, or even copyrighted, and this article is thus not an exhaustive list of the terms under which software is available. Software may be published without an accompanying license, as License-Free Software, in which case it remains copyrighted, its distribution is subject to ordinary copyright law, and its sale is subject to ordinary sales law. Software may also be released to the public domain, in which case it is not copyrighted and the notion of a copyright license simply does not apply at all (although the other parts of a software licence, including warranty provisions, will still apply to the sale of such software).

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[edit] Open source / free software licenses

The terms "Open source licenses", and "free software licenses" are usually interchangeable. There are minor differences, but these occur only in fringe areas. In general, for a license to be considered "open source", it is approved by Open Source Initiative, and for a license to be "free software", it should be approved by Free Software Foundation.

[edit] Free software licenses

[edit] GPL 2 compatible

The GNU General Public License is a popular license, with offerings including Linux, such that it is useful to know if the license chosen is compatible with it. Knowing compatibility is important if a developer wants to avail his or herself of the wide GPL software 'commons'.

[edit] GPL 2 incompatible

The GPL has certain special requirements that make code under licenses incompatible (that is, cannot be consequently licensed) under the GPL.

[edit] Non-free software license

  • Microsoft Reference License

[edit] Free Licensed Closed Source

  • Free Solaris Binary License

[edit] Pay Licensed Viewable Source

  • Microsoft's "Shared Source"

[edit] Pay Licensed Closed Source

  • Microsoft Windows' EULA
  • The DEULA

[edit] Pay Licensed Closed Source

  • Free For non commercial Use

Can be used for free by a party if the goal does not involve commercial gain. If it is used for commercial gain, payment is required. If it is used for charity/personal objectives payment is not required.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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