The Apache logo |
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| Author | Apache Software Foundation |
|---|---|
| Version | 2.0 |
| Publisher | Apache Software Foundation |
| Published | January 2004 |
| DFSG compatible | Yes[1] |
| Free software | Yes[2] |
| OSI approved | Yes[3] |
| GPL compatible | Yes - GPLv3[2] |
| Copyleft | No |
| Copyfree | No[4] |
| Linking from code with a different license | Yes |
The Apache License /əˈpætʃi/ is a copyfree free software license authored by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The Apache License requires preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer.
All software produced by the ASF or any of its projects or subjects is licensed according to the terms of the Apache License. Some non-ASF software is also licensed using the Apache License. As of November 2010, over 6000 projects located at SourceForge.net were available under the terms of the Apache License.[5] In a blog post from May 2008 Google mentioned that 25,000 out of the 100,000 projects then hosted on Google Code were using the Apache License.[6]
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The Apache License 1.0 was the original Apache License which applies only to older versions of Apache packages (such as version 1.2 of the Web server).
The Apache License 1.1 was approved by the ASF in 2000: The primary change from the 1.0 license is in the 'advertising clause' (section 3 of the 1.0 license); derived products are no longer required to include attribution in their advertising materials, but only in their documentation.[7]
The ASF adopted the Apache License 2.0 in January 2004. The stated goals of the license included making the license easier for non-ASF projects to use, improving compatibility with GPL-based software, allowing the license to be included by reference instead of listed in every file, clarifying the license on contributions, and requiring a patent license on contributions that necessarily infringe a contributor's own patents.[7]
Like any free software license, the Apache License allows the user of the software the freedom to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software, under the terms of the license.
The Apache License, like most other permissive licenses, does not require modified versions of the software to be distributed using the same license (in contrast to copyleft licenses). In every licensed file, any original copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices in redistributed code must be preserved (excluding notices that do not pertain to any part of the derivative works); and, in every licensed file changed, a notification must be added stating that changes have been made to that file.
If a NOTICE text file is included as part of the distribution of the original work, then derivative works must include a readable copy of these notices (again, excluding notices not pertaining to any part of the derivative work), in at least one of three places: within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the derivative works, within the source form or documentation, or within a display generated by the derivative works (wherever such third-party notices normally appear). The contents of the NOTICE file do not modify the license, as they are for informational purposes only, and adding more attribution notices as addenda to the NOTICE text is permissible, provided that these notices cannot be understood as modifying the license. Modifications may have appropriate copyright notices, and may provide different license terms for the modifications.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any contributions submitted by a licensee to a licensor will be under the terms of the license without any terms and conditions, but this does not preclude any separate agreements with the licensor regarding these contributions.
The Apache Software Foundation and the Free Software Foundation agree that the Apache License 2.0 is a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL).[8] Compatibility in this case means that since the GPL version 3 is considered a superset of the Apache License 2.0, a project combining GPL version 3 and Apache License 2.0 code will need to be licensed under the GPL version 3.[9]
However, the Free Software Foundation considers all versions of the Apache License (as of 2007) to be incompatible with the previous GPL versions 1 and 2.[10][11]
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