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Free license

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, seeFree license (disambiguation).

Afree licenseoropen licenseis alicensethat allows copyrighted work to be reused, modified, and redistributed. These uses are normally prohibited bycopyright,patentor otherIntellectual property(IP) laws. The term broadly coversfree content licensesandopen-source licenses,also known asfree software licenses.

History

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Network of licenses (and years of license creation)

The invention of the term "free license" and the focus on therights of userswere connected to the sharing traditions of thehacker cultureof the 1970s public domain software ecosystem, the social and politicalfree software movement(since 1980) and theopen source movement(since the 1990s).[1]These rights were codified by different groups and organizations for different domains inFree Software Definition,Open Source Definition,Debian Free Software Guidelines,Definition of Free Cultural WorksandThe Open Definition.[2]These definitions were then transformed into licenses, using thecopyrightas legal mechanism. Ideas of free/open licenses have since spread into different spheres of society.

Open source,free culture(unified asfree and open-source movement),anticopyright,Wikimedia Foundationprojects,public domainadvocacy groups andpirate partiesare connected with free and open licenses.

Free software license

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Main articles:open-source licenseandfree software license
A pie chart displays the most commonly used open source license as Apache at 30%, MIT at 26%, GPL at 18%, BSD at 8%, LGPL at 3%, MPL at 2%, and remaining 13% as licenses with below 1% market share each.
Popular free and open source licenses include theApache License,theMIT License,theGNU General Public License(GPL), theBSD Licenses,theGNU Lesser General Public License(LGPL) and theMozilla Public License(MPL).

Free software licenses,also known asopen-source licenses,aresoftware licensesthat allow content to be used, modified, and shared.[3]They facilitatefree and open-source software(FOSS) development.[4]Intellectual property(IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works.[5]Free and open-source licenses use these existing legal structures for an inverse purpose.[6]Theygrantthe recipient the rights to use the software, examine thesource code,modify it, and distribute the modifications. These criteria are outlined in theOpen Source DefinitionandThe Free Software Definition.[7]

After 1980, the United States began to treat software as a literary work covered by copyright law.[8]Richard Stallmanfounded thefree software movementin response to the rise ofproprietary software.[9]The term "open source" was used by theOpen Source Initiative(OSI), founded by free software developersBruce PerensandEric S. Raymond.[10][11]"Open source" is alternative label that emphasizes the strengths of theopen development modelrather than software freedoms.[12]While the goals behind the terms are different, open-source licenses andfree software licensesdescribe the same type of licenses.[13]

The two main categories of free and open-source licenses arepermissiveandcopyleft.[14]Both grant permission to change and distribute software. Typically, they requireattributionanddisclaim liability.[15][16]Permissive licenses come from academia.[17]Copyleft licenses come from the free software movement.[18]Copyleft licenses requirederivative worksto be distributed with the source code and under a similar license.[15][16]Since the mid-2000s, courts in multiple countries have upheld the terms of both types of license.[19]Software developers have filed cases as copyright infringement and as breaches of contract.[20]

Free content license

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Main article:Free content § Licenses
Definition of Free Cultural Works logo, selected in a logo contest in 2006[21]

According to the current definition of open content on the OpenContent website, any general, royalty-free copyright license would qualify as an open license because it 'provides users with the right to make more kinds of uses than those normally permitted under the law. These permissions are granted to users free of charge.' However, the narrower definition used in the Open Definition effectively limits open content to libre content. Any free content license, defined by the Definition of Free Cultural Works, would qualify as an open content license.

Licenses

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By type of license

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By type of content

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By authors

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See also

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Notes

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  1. ^Kelty, Christpher M. (2018)."The Cultural Significance of free Software - Two Bits"(PDF).Duke Universitypress - durham and london. p. 99.Prior to 1998, Free Software referred either to the Free Software Foundation (and the watchful, micromanaging eye of Stallman) or to one of thousands of different commercial, avocational, or university-research projects, processes, licenses, and ideologies that had a variety of names: sourceware, freeware, shareware, open software, public domain software, and so on. The term Open Source, by contrast, sought to encompass them all in one movement.
  2. ^Open Definition 2.1on opendefinition.org"This essential meaning matches that of “open” with respect to software as in the Open Source Definition and is synonymous with “free” or “libre” as in the Free Software Definition and Definition of Free Cultural Works. "
  3. ^Coleman 2004,"Political Agnosticism".
  4. ^Rosen 2005,pp. 73–90.
  5. ^Rosen 2005,pp. 22–23.
  6. ^Rosen 2005,pp. 103–106.
  7. ^Greenbaum 2016,pp. 1304–1305.
  8. ^Oman 2018,pp. 641–642.
  9. ^Williams 2002,ch. 1.
  10. ^Carver 2005,pp. 448–450.
  11. ^Greenbaum 2016,§ I.A.
  12. ^Brock 2022,§ 16.3.4.
  13. ^Byfield 2008.
  14. ^Smith 2022,§ 3.2.
  15. ^abSen, Subramaniam & Nelson 2008,pp. 211–212.
  16. ^abMeeker 2020,16:13.
  17. ^Rosen 2005,p. 69.
  18. ^Joy 2022,pp. 990–992.
  19. ^Smith 2022,§ 3.4.1.
  20. ^Smith 2022,§ 3.4.
  21. ^Logo conteston freedomdefined.org (2006)
  22. ^PDDL 1.0on opendatacommons.org

References

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