It applies to a given file the runtime library that bears a notice placed by the holder of the file stating that the file is governed by gplv3 along with this exception. Can you distribute software under gpl v3 and require users. License bitcoin unlimited software under gplv3 submitted by freetrader 7 december 2018 summary in the interest of ensuring that the developmental playing field between bitcoin unlimited and corporations using its software remains level, re. You can freely use, modify, distribute and sell a software licensed under the apache license without worrying about the use of software. What you want is a free software license without copyleft. Id like to dual license it, so i can offer it for commercial use. The gnu affero general public license version 3 agplv3 is a copyleft license nearly identical to the gplv3. If you want to create a proprietary product with ettus research hw sw, you need to use the alternative license, which was created specifically for this purpose. The kernel itself is still licensed under the gplv2, and thirdparty software that runs on top of the platform can be distributed under pretty much any license, including commercial and copyleft.
If you use the gplv3 licensed version of uhd in your application, your application must then also be licensed under the gplv3. Both licenses have the same copyleft scope, but materially differ in one important way. You may discover, however that these terms do not work so well in your favor, since one of the terms prevents you from a. The gpl is viral in that it extends to derivative works.
If im using a gpl 3 library in my project, can i license. The free software foundation may publish revised andor new versions of the gnu lesser general public license from time to time. Can you distribute software under gpl v3 and require users to. Are there any resources for choosing or creating a commercial software license. Lawsuit threatens to break new ground on the gpl and. Gnu general public license, version 3 spdx short identifier. Applying gplv3 termination to gplv2licensed works by eben moglen november 27, 2017. You may just put the license as a comment on those source code files. This page discusses in practical terms how the gplv3 would be applied in particular scenarios. Starting from gplv3, it is unilaterally compatible for materials like text and other media under creative commons attributionsharealike 4.
Open source licenses grant permission for anybody to use, modify, and share licensed software for any purpose, subject to conditions preserving the provenance and openness of the software. A practical guide to gpl compliance software freedom law. Unfortunately, and for reasons that i dont understand, the r core considers the mit license to be not a proper license but rather a template for a license. There are two main elements to the gpl, designed to prevent open source software being exploited by their inclusion within nonfree, closed sourced software products. When a person or company wants to use a project licensed underfor examplegpl v3, apache 2. By contrast, the gnu general public license is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a. How to add additional terms as permitted by section 7. You cant take gpl licensed parts and relicense them under the mit license, since that is against the gpl terms. When distributing derived works, the source code of the work must be made available under the same license. Apache 2 software can therefore be included in gplv3 projects, because the gplv3 license accepts our software into gplv3 works. However, a later study in 20 showed that software licensed under the gpl license family has increased, and that even the data from black duck software has shown a total. Because, gnu gpl, gnu lgpl and gnu fdl, allow commercial use.
The boilerplate can be found at the end of the gnu gplv3 license. Busybox is licensed under the gnu general public license version 2, which is often abbreviated as gplv2. The following licenses are sorted by the number of conditions, from most gnu agplv3 to none unlicense. We hope that this change in gplv3 will foster more cooperation and sharing within the free software community. The free software foundation may publish revised andor new versions of the. If you have licensed software youve written under gpl version 2, and you are the original licensor of that software, you may wish to relicense your software. For example, if you write some software and release it under the gnu general public license a widelyused copyleft license, and then someone else modifies that software and distributes their modified version, the modified version must be licensed under the gnu gpl too including any new code written specifically to go into the modified. Jun 29, 2007 the gnu general public license gnu gpl or gpl is a widely used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software. Frequently answered questions open source initiative. The following licenses are in use for r or associated software such as packages. The program refers to any able work licensed under this license. If you are okay with this, feel free to use infinite scroll under the gplv3, without purchasing a commercial license. Lots of great free software is available under this license, with strong communities surrounding it. Art is open source software licensed under the gplv3 license.
Open source licenses are licenses that comply with the open source definition in brief, they allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. User products is a term specially defined in the license. I am writing software licensed under mit and including gpl. The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to. If some network client software is released under agplv3, does it. Nov 02, 2016 gpl, or the gnu general public license, is an open source license meant for software. If your software is licensed under the terms of the gpl, it is free. License bitcoin unlimited software under gplv3 submitted by freetrader 7 december 2018 summary in the interest of ensuring that the developmental playing field between bitcoin unlimited and corporations using its software remains level, re license the bitcoin unlimited software under. So i use the gpl if i have to that is, if ive incorporated others gpl code, and i use the mit license otherwise. The free software foundation recommends taking the additional step of adding a boilerplate notice to the top of each file.
The apache software foundation and the free software foundation agree that the apache license 2. The software freedom law center provides practical advice for developers about including permissively licensed source. You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you track changesdates of in source files and keep modifications under gpl. There are multiple variants of the gnu gpl, each with different requirements. License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. If youre not incorporating code that is licensed under the gpl, i recommend going with the mit license. The affero general public license affero gpl and informally affero license is a free software license. Top 10 gnu gpl license questions answered whitesource. Aug 26, 2008 the software included in this product contains ed software that is licensed under the gpl.
The free software foundation considers the apache license, version 2. This post takes a look at the legal issues raised by both cases and what they mean for foss producers and users. Top 10 apache license questions answered whitesource. Jan 18, 2017 the gnu affero general public license version 3 agplv3 is a copyleft license nearly identical to the gplv3. Apr 14, 2016 if your software includes gpl software, there is a strong likelihood that you are obligated by the terms of the gpl to license your code under the same gpl license. Historically, the gpl license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the free and open. Applying gplv3 termination to gplv2 licensed works by eben moglen november 27, 2017. Most gpl version 2 software is actually licensed as gpl version 2 or any later version, or. This article concludes a five part series on the latest version of the most commonly used software license. The following 153 pages are in this category, out of 153 total.
However, gplv3 software cannot be included in apache projects. Pages in category software using the gpl license wikipedia. Some of the mostinstalled open source software is gpl licensed, such as linux, wordpress, and wikipedias underlying software, mediawiki. When versata software sued ameriprise financial services for breaching its software license, it unwittingly unearthed a gpl violation of its own and touched off another lawsuit that could prove to be a leading case on free and open source software licensing. To prevent this, the gpl assures that patents cannot be used to render. You can license your commercial application under the gplv3 license as long as you comply with the terms of the gplv3 license. A quick guide to gplv3 gnu project free software foundation. Anyone can copy, modify and distribute this software. How the license would interact with other common free software licenses. Can i use the gplv3 license for my commercial application.
A practical guide to gpl compliance software freedom law center. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to legally combine source code from separately licensed software in order to create and publish a new program. In this final part we ask the most important question of all. You can distribute your application using a gpl library commercially, but you must also provide the source code. Busybox is licensed under the gnu general public license. Feb 24, 2020 when a person or company wants to use a project licensed underfor examplegpl v3, apache 2. The license was originally written by richard stallman of the free software foundation fsf for the gnu project, and grants the recipients of a computer program the rights. Frequently asked questions about the gnu licenses gnu project.
How you would use a work licensed under version 2 or any later version under version 3. However, oracle also make the connector available under their universal foss exception, which allows the code to be used with any license approved by the fsf as a free license. The microsoft public license is a free and open source software license released by microsoft, which wrote it for its projects that were released as open source. Permissions of this copyleft license are conditioned on making available. Lawsuit threatens to break new ground on the gpl and software. Jun 29, 2007 the gnu general public license is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. Frequently asked questions about the gnu licenses gnu. The gnu affero general public license3 agpl is a special license in the family of open source licenses, creating risks and opportunities that do not exist with most other open source licenses.
The agplv3s section states an additional condition not present in gplv2 or gplv3. The first version of the affero general public license agplv1, was published by affero, inc. Busybox is licensed under the gnu general public license, version 2. A copy of that license is included in this document on page x. Explaining and understanding the gnu general public license. Why dash uses the mit license and not a copyleft gpl. But you can include mit licensed parts or another gplcompatible license in the project. If copyleft is not desired i suggest you to use the liblibpng license. You are free to reproduce and distribute original or derivative works of any software licensed under the mspl license.
You may obtain the complete corresponding source code from us for a period of three years after our last shipment of this product, which will be no earlier than 20110801, by. I currently have an open source project that is licensed under gplv3. However, free here does not essentially mean freewareit can also be a paid software. While sun officials would not confirm the plan to duallicense opensolaris under the cddl and gplv3, tom. Compatibility means that a person can now take a work they received under the terms of cc bysa 4. In august 20, according to black duck software, the websites data shows that the gpl license family is used by 54% of opensource projects, with a breakdown of the individual licenses shown in the following table. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Gnu lesser general public license version 3 open source. The gnu gpl is the most widely used free software license and has a strong copyleft requirement. Free software licence openfoam is distributed by the openfoam foundation and is freely available and open source, licensed under the gnu general public licence.
The creative commons attributionsharealike international license version 4. When people distribute user products that include software under gplv3, section 6 requires that they provide you with information necessary to modify that software. Revised versions of the gnu lesser general public license. The software included in this product contains ed software that is licensed under the gpl. On thursday, october 8, creative commons cc announced the addition of the gnu general public license version 3. The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. Releasing your project that uses infinite scroll under the gplv3, in turn, requires your project to be licensed under the gplv3. This is the same license the linux kernel is under, so you may be somewhat familiar with it by now. Insert the word lesser before general in all three places in the boilerplate notice to make sure that you refer to the gnu lgplv3 and not the gnu gplv3. When providing a license for your product, you dont simply say. Wikipedias content is mostly under the creative commons bysa license, which has similar sharealike features to the gpl.
One popular r software tool, shiny, licenses its package as a whole under gplv3, but the server which one needs to run its apps is licensed under the agpl. If you want to link with proprietary software, then use the gnu lgpl. The apache license is a permissive open source software license so you can release your modified version of the apache licensed product under any license of your choice. The gnu gpl is the most widely used free software license and has a strong. And so if you want to use the mit license, you must include a license file in your package that includes.
796 1372 1067 119 1414 958 633 805 277 750 1479 414 948 727 1553 1279 276 349 1171 218 1293 1158 526 113 726 32 1188 872 506 1215 467 1149 1471 903 38 587 365