IP & Art

What is the useful open source software license which we should pay special attention to?

1. The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)[6] in the late 1980s.[7] As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license compatibility.[8][9]

The MIT License is compatible with many copyleft licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). Any software licensed under the terms of the MIT License can be integrated with software licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL.[10] Unlike copyleft software licenses, the MIT License also permits reuse within proprietary software, provided that all copies of the software or its substantial portions include a copy of the terms of the MIT License and also a copyright notice.[9][11] As of 2020, the MIT License was the most popular software license found in one analysis,[12] continuing from reports in 2015 that the MIT License was the most popular software license on GitHub.[13]

Notable projects that use the MIT License include the X Window System, Ruby on Rails, Nim, Node.js, Lua, and jQuery. Notable companies using the MIT License include Microsoft (.NET Core), Google (Angular), and Meta (React).

2.BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system. The original version has since been revised, and its descendants are referred to as modified BSD licenses.

BSD is both a license and a class of license (generally referred to as BSD-like). The modified BSD license (in wide use today) is very similar to the license originally used for the BSD version of Unix. The BSD license is a simple license that merely requires that all code retain the BSD license notice if redistributed in source code format, or reproduce the notice if redistributed in binary format. The BSD license (unlike some other licenses e.g. GPL) does not require that source code be distributed at all.

3. The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).[4] It allows users 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, without concern for royalties. The ASF and its projects release their software products under the Apache License. The license is also used by many non-ASF projects.

4. The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software.[7] The license was the first copyleft for general use and were originally written by the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Richard Stallman, for the GNU Project. The license grant the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition.[8] These GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.

Historically, the GPL license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the free and open-source software domain.[7][9][10][11][12] Prominent free software programs licensed under the GPL include the Linux kernel and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). David A. Wheeler argues that the copyleft provided by the GPL was crucial to the success of Linux-based systems, giving the programmers who contributed to the kernel the assurance that their work would benefit the whole world and remain free, rather than being exploited by software companies that would not have to give anything back to the community.[13]

In 2007, the third version of the license (GPLv3) was released to address some perceived problems with the second version (GPLv2) which were discovered during the latter's long-time usage. To keep the license up to date, the GPL license includes an optional "any later version" clause, allowing users to choose between the original terms or the terms in new versions as updated by the FSF. Developers can omit it when licensing their software; the Linux kernel, for instance, is licensed under GPLv2 without the "any later version" clause

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia