Sybase Open Watcom Public License

Sybase Open Watcom Public License
DFSG compatible No
FSF approved No[1]
OSI approved Yes[2]
GPL compatible No
Copyleft Very strong

The Sybase Open Watcom Public Licence is a software license that has been approved by the Open Source Initiative.[2] It is the licence under which the Open Watcom C/C++ compiler is released.

The license has not been accepted as "free" under the Debian Free Software Guidelines, due to the license's termination clauses.[3][4]

The Free Software Foundation has stated that the license is not "free" as it requires the source to be published when you "deploy" the software for private use only.[1] In contrast, FSF's GPL does not require that modified source code has to be made public when the software modification was only used privately without a public release of the software. This makes the Watcom license also GPL incompatible and a stronger copyleft license than the GPL and even the AGPL.

The Fedora project also considers the license as non free, citing the FSF argumentation.[5]

History

The draft of version 2.0 of the Licence was published on 20 January 2004. This version incorporated changes from Apple and made the licence less specific to OpenWatcom.[6][7]

References

  1. 1 2 "Various Licenses and Comments about Them - Sybase Open Watcom Public License version 1.0 (#Watcom)". gnu.org. Retrieved 2015-12-23. This is not a free software license. It requires you to publish the source code publicly whenever you “Deploy” the covered software, and “Deploy” is defined to include many kinds of private use.
  2. 1 2 "Sybase Open Watcom Public License version 1.0". Approved Licences. Open Source Initiative.
  3. ↑ Debian Bug report #376431 RFP: openwatcom.
  4. ↑ Is the Sybase Open Watcom License ok?, thread on debian-legal mailing list (July 2006).
  5. ↑ Fedora Wiki: Licensing
  6. ↑ Markus Neifer (2004-01-20). "MN Watcom News Page".
  7. ↑ ftp://ftp.openwatcom.org/pub/devel/license-2.pdf

Further reading

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