List of software licenses

In computing, software that is copyrighted and licensed under a software license is done under a variety of licensing schemes. For end-users there are proprietary licenses and there are free software licenses. Within these schemes are further classifications.There are also different licensing schemes for access to and use of source code. To address special intellectual property issues regarding source code, Open Source licenses and special copyright schemes, such as copyleft, have been created.

Not all software is licensed, or even copyrighted, and this article is thus not an exhaustive list of the terms under which software is available. Software may be published without an accompanying license, as License-Free Software, in which case it remains copyrighted, its distribution is subject to ordinary copyright law, and its sale is subject to ordinary sales law. Software may also be released to the public domain, in which case it is not copyrighted and the notion of a copyright license simply does not apply at all (although the other parts of a software licence, including warranty provisions, will still apply to the "sale" of such software).

Open source / free software licenses

The terms "Open source licenses", and "free software licenses" are usually interchangeable. There are minor differences, but these occur only in fringe areas. In general, for a license to be considered "open source", it is approved by Open Source Initiative, and for a license to be "free software", it should be approved by Free Software Foundation.

Free software licenses

GPL 2 "compatible"

The GNU General Public License is a popular license, with offerings including Linux, such that it is useful to know if the license chosen is compatible with it. Knowing compatibility is important if a developer wants to avail his or herself of the wide GPL software 'commons'.

* Artistic License 2.0
* Berkeley Database License (aka the Sleepycat License or Sleepycat Software Product License)
* BSD license (modified version)
* BDL / BSD Documentation License
* CeCILL ("CEA CNRS INRIA Logiciel Libre")
* Cryptix General License
* GPL / GNU General Public License
* Intel Open Source License
* ISC licence [cite web|url=http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html#new-compatible-licenses|title=A Quick Guide to GPLv3|author=Free Software Foundation|work=Licenses|publisher=Free Software Foundation]
* LGPL / GNU Lesser General Public License
* License of Perl
* License of Python
* MIT license
* Poetic License
* Public Domain
* W3C Software Notice and License
* WTFPL
* X11 license
* zlib/libpng license
* Zope Public License

GPL 2 "incompatible"

The GPL has certain special requirements that make code under licenses incompatible (that is, cannot be consequently licensed) under the GPL.

* Academic Free License (AFL)
* Affero General Public License
* Apache License
* Apple Public Source License (APSL)
* BSD license (original version)
* Common Public License
* Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)
* Creative Commons licenses
* Eclipse Public License (EPL)
* European Union Public Licence (EUPL)
* Hacktivismo Enhanced-Source Software License Agreement
* IBM Public License
* LaTeX Project Public License
* Microsoft Public License
* Microsoft Reciprocal License
* Mozilla Public License (MPL)
* Netscape Public License (NPL)
* Open Software License
* OpenSSL license
* PHP License
* Q Public License (QPL)
* Software Libre para Uso Civil (SLUC) – “Free Software for Civil Use”
* Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
* Sun Public License
* XFree86 1.1 License

Non-free software license

* Microsoft Reference License

Commercial Royalty-Free

A form of licensing where typically a development version of the product is for a fee but the deployment of applications built or assembled with or using the product do not incur an additional fee.

Free Licensed Closed Source

* Free Solaris Binary License
* Free For non commercial Use
** Can be used for free by a party if the goal does not involve commercial gain. If it is used for commercial gain, payment is required. If it is used for charity/personal objectives payment is not required.

Pay Licensed Viewable Source

* Microsoft's Shared Source

Pay Licensed Closed Source

* Microsoft Windows' EULA

See also

* Comparison of free software licences

References