Academic Free License

Infobox software license
name = Academic Free License
author = Lawrence E. Rosen
version = 1.2, 2.1, 3.0
copyright = Lawrence E. Rosen
date = 2002
OSI approved = Yes
Debian approved = ?
Free Software = Yes
GPL compatible = See Text
copyleft = No
linking = YesThe Academic Free License (AFL) is a permissive free software license written in 2002 by Lawrence E. Rosen, general counsel of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

The license grants similar rights to the BSD, MIT, UoI/NCSA and Apache licenses — licenses allowing the software to be made proprietary — but was written to correct perceived problems with those licenses:

*The AFL makes clear what software is being licensed by including a statement following the software's copyright notice;
*The AFL includes a complete copyright grant to the software;
*The AFL contains a complete patent grant to the software;
*The AFL makes clear that no trademark rights are granted to the licensor's trademarks;
*The AFL warrants that the licensor either owns the copyright or is distributing the software under a license;
*The AFL is itself copyrighted, with the right granted to copy and distribute without modification.

AFL versions 1.2 and 2.1 are not compatible with the GNU GPL. [cite web|url=http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html |title=Various Licenses and Comments about Them |accessdate=2007-07-07 |last=Richard |first=Stallman |publisher=Free Software Foundation ] The Free Software Foundation has not commented on the newer version 3.0, which Eric S. Raymond contends is GPL compatible. In late 2002, an OSI working draft considered it a "best practice" license. [ cite web|url=http://www.catb.org/~esr/Licensing-HOWTO.html |title=Licensing HOWTO |accessdate=2007-07-07 |last=Eric |first=Raymond |date=2002-11-09 ] In mid 2006, however, the OSI's License Proliferation Committee found it "redundant with more popular licenses" [ cite web|url=http://www.opensource.org/proliferation-report |title=Report of License Proliferation Committee and draft FAQ |accessdate=2007-08-17 |date=2006-07-31 |publisher=Open Source Initiative] , specifically version 2 of the Apache Software License.

References

External links

* [http://opensource-definition.org/licenses/afl-2.0.html Text of the Academic Free License v1.2]
* [http://opensource-definition.org/licenses/afl-2.1.html Text of the Academic Free License v2.1]
* [http://www.opensource.org/licenses/afl-3.0.php Text of the Academic Free License v3.0]
* [http://www.rosenlaw.com/html/GL14.pdf Allocation of the Risk by Lawrence Rosen] (PDF) - reasoning behind the Academic Free License

See also

*License proliferation
*Open Software License - similar, but reciprocal license by the same author