Recent versions contain contract clausessimilar to the Open Software License, and should beavoided for the same reasons. This is a free software license, and compatible with the GPL. However, if you are looking for the best among lax, weak licenses, werecommend using the Apache 2.0 license among those. Contrary to its name, it is notbased on any of the BSD licenses, but on the ISC License,with the only difference being that it doesn't contain clauses that requirepreservation of copyright notices and the license notice.
In GNU programs we conventionally put thelicense in a file called COPYING. This reallyhas nothing to do with the GNU GPL—it applies no matter whichfree software license you use to release the program. Previousversions of this license are also OK to use, but we do recommendupgrading to this version if you can. The Open Font License (including its original release, version 1.0)is a free copyleft license for fonts. It is acopyleft license because any larger work that includes part of thework you received must be released, as a whole, either under the samelicense or under a similar license that meets stated criteria.
Licenses for Other Works
Even better, for a substantial program,use the Apache 2.0 license since it takes action against patent treachery. We urge you not to use the original BSD license for software youwrite. Theflaw is not fatal; that is, it does not render the software nonfree.But it does cause practical problems,including incompatibility with the GNU GPL. This license has been succeeded by the GNU AfferoGeneral Public License version 3; please use that instead. The new section, 2(d), covers the distribution of applicationprograms through web services or computer networks. The lack of requirement to preserve copyright notices and the license noticedoes not necessarily mean it is safe to remove them.
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It hassome attribution requirements which make it incompatible withGPLv2. Our comments about the Modified BSD licenseapply to this license too. This is the original BSD license with the advertising clause andanother clause removed. Our comments about the Zero-clause BSD license applyto this license. As the license is clearly based on the Expat License, we recommend tocall it the No-attribution Expat License (but please note that Expat has neverused this license). The difference between the X11 license and the Expat license isthat the X11 license contains an extra paragraph about using the XConsortium's name.
This is a permissive non-copyleft free documentation license that iscompatible with the GNU FDL. (The YaST software itself no longer uses this nonfree YaST license;happily, it is now free software, released under the GNU GPL.) Please don't use this license, andwe urge you to avoid any software that has been released underit. Recent versions of Squeak (from 4.0 on) are released under anExpat-style License with some portions of the codeunder the Apache License 2.0. This is not a free software license because it does not allowcommercial distribution of a modified version. Of course you should notuse this license, and we urge you to avoid any software that has beenreleased under it.
We try to list the most commonly encountered free software license onthis page, but cannot list them all; we'll try our best to answerquestions about free software licenses whether or not they are listedhere. GNU also has additional compatibility and commentary about the use of other licenses with the GNU-GPL family of licenses. GNU.org has a compatibility chart and additional commentary for the different versions of GPL.
- This means that software that’s only available underprevious versions of the MPL is still incompatible with the GPL and AGPL.
- This is a lax, permissive free software license, compatible withthe GNU GPL, which we recommend GNU packages use for README and othersmall supporting files.
- The GNU GPLv.3 full license terms are quite lengthy and detailed and you should consider reading them fully if you are using the GNU GPLv.3 license for any significant project or attempting to integrate code licensed under the GLPv.3 license into your existing projects.
- It is very important for practical reasons to include contactinformation for how to reach you, perhaps in the README file, but thishas nothing to do with the legal issues of applying the license.
- To do this two-step relicensing, you need to first write a piece of codewhich you can license under the CeCILL v2, or find a suitable modulealready available that way, and add it to the program.
Licenses for Works of Practical Use
This helps toavoid the confusion and antisocial effect described above. We recommend that developers choose alicense that clearly requires preserving notices for their own works because ofthe confusion and antisocial effect that is the result of the 0BSD License. There are currently several variants of XFree86, and only some ofthem use this license.
GNU-GPLv3
It is incompatible with the GNU GPL because it does notcontain the explicit GPL-compatibility clause ofthe basic CeCILL. It is incompatible with theGPL because it has requirements that are not present in the GPL. This license is also sometimes called the“4-clause BSD license”. This creates practical problems likethose of the original BSD license, including incompatibility with the GNUGPL. It has a fewrequirements that render it incompatible with the GNU GPL, such as strongprohibitions on the use of Apache-related names. It consists of the GNU GPLversion 2, with one additional section that Affero added with FSFapproval.
We urge you not to use the ZPL version 1 for software you write.However, there is no reason to avoid running programs that have beenreleased under this license, such as previous versions of Zope. Of course, we urge you to avoid using nonfree software licenses, andto avoid using nonfree programs. This is a copyleft free software license, incompatible with the GPL.It is incompatible because it places extra restrictions onredistribution of modified versions that contradict the redistributionrequirements in the GPL.
- Please note that GPLv2 is, by itself, not compatible with GPLv3.However, most software released under GPLv2 allows you to use theterms of later versions of the GPL as well.
- If you want to use a lax, permissive non-copyleft freesoftware license, it is much better to use the modified BSD license, the X11 licenseor the Expat license.
- It is also possible to make your program a GNU package, a part of theGNU Project.
- The licenses are more or less in alphabetical order within eachsection.
- We will avoidusing software under this license, as we do all other nonfree software.
The copyright disclaimer
It is also ambiguous, since the same people also callthe X11 license “the MIT License,”failing to distinguish them. It is based on the Apache License2.0; the scope of the patent license has changed so that whenan organization's employee works on a project, the organizationdoes not have to license all of its patents to recipients. It consists of betory casino bonus the GPL, plus an exception allowing linking tosoftware not under the GPL.
Thus, developers can'trely on this license to provide a strong copyleft. It also,indirectly, allows relicensing to GPL version 3, because there is away to relicense to the CeCILL v2, and the CeCILL v2 gives a way torelicense to any version of the GNU GPL. By itself, it has a copyleftcomparable to the GPL's, and incompatible with it. (If it madecompliance an actual condition of the license, it would not be a freesoftware license.) Unfortunately, its weak copyleftand choice of law clause make it incompatible with the GNU GPL.
This makes it possible to use the Unicode v3license as a template to release other data or software underit. It differs from earlier versions as it does not include specificreferences to Unicode. Are covered by the Unicode Terms of Use, a different, nonfreelicense that appears on the same page but covers different files. As a result, if a piece of software was released underany version of the SGI Free License B, you can use it under the terms ofthis free version.
It includesclauses such as “Each version of the Unicode Standard has furtherspecifications of rights and restrictions of use.” We recommend you use this license for any Perl 4 or Perl 5 packageyou write, to promote coherence and uniformity in Perl programming.Outside of Perl, we urge you not to use this license; it is better touse just the GNU GPL. This license is the disjunction of the Artistic License 1.0 and the GNU GPL—in other words,you can choose either of those two licenses. Check the license notices on the MPL-covered software before you makea Larger Work this way.

