Licensing

• Apache License 2.0
  • Apache License is often used as an open-source license. It allows end users to have control over where/how they use the code, to make modifications, and to redistribute, including in proprietary software. This license also requires developers to list any major changes to their code.
  • Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]
    
    Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
    
    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
    
    Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
• GNU General Public License v3.0
  • The GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee an end-users freedom to share and change all versions of a program, ensuring it remains free software. This includes the assertion that freedoms expressed by the publisher of the software must be maintained by any further distributors; when proprietary software distributors include code licensed with GNU, references must be made to the original project so end users can have access to the free-to-access code.
  • <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
    
    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
    
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
    
    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see .
• MIT License
  • The MIT License grants any person who obtains a copy of the software and associated files nearly full rights, including right to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, publish, sublicense, and sell copies of the software. However, all proprietary software developers who use MIT Licensed software are to include the same copyright notice in all copies or any substantial portions of the software. This license is also written in simple, easy-to-read language, allowing a larger audience of end users to understand and develop with licensed code, encouraging the MIT License's use for educational or introductory software.
  • Copyright © <year> <copyright holders>
    
    Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
    
    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
    
    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
• BSD Licenses
  • The BSD Licenses are based on the MIT License, allowing for more specificity.
    • BSD 0-Clause License: The more open license. This license allows full rights, not even requiring references to the original publisher.
      • Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted.
    • BSD 2-Clause "Simplified"License:
      • More similar to MIT License, but talks about how material may be advertised
      • Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
        
        1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
        
        2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
    • BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License:
      • Same as BSD 2, but contains an additional clause, essentially preventing proprietary software developers from using software without express permission from the author, as advertisements cannot include mentions of the original developers without.
      • Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
        
        1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
        
        2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
        
        3. Neither the name of the [organization] nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
    • BSD 4-Clause License:
      • BSD 4 includes the prior, with another line mentioning an express requirement for advertisements of products made using this software.
      • Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
        
        1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
        
        2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
        
        3. Neither the name of the [organization] nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
        
        4. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by the [organization].
  • Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal
    • This license may be used to waive any rights provided by copyright, allowing code not to be owned by you or anybody else.
      
      The full license may be found here: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/cc0-1.0/
  • Eclipse Public License 2.0
    • This license is useful for publishing Java libraries, and allows for easy licensing of packages based on other packages with their own version of this license. This license applies a patent to the work done by the author. It does not cover liability and warranty, however, which may be an important area to cover as these licenses are typically used for dependencies.
      
      The full license may be found here: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/epl-2.0/
  • GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
    • AGPL is very similar to GPL, but contains additional clauses allowing works transferred over a network to be protected, such as a server. With GPL, an end user could legally copy and host an exact copy of the author's server and act as a competitor; this is not the case with AGPL.
      
      The full license may be found here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.fr.html
  • GNU General Public License v2.0
    • Although similar to GPL v3, this license does not allow as many adjustments as GPL v3, including lacking the ability to close-source. It has less flexibility with other licenses, there are some gray areas regarding patents and DRM, and lack of discussion of violations. For some licensing purists, v2 is preferred; maybe you may be inspired to make similar licensing choices as them.
      
      The full license may be found here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.0.html
  • GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1
    • Similar to the GNU GPL, LGPL allows proprietary software developers to use LGPL code in their products. However, they are not required to abide by nearly as many terms in order to do so. The only requirements for using code licensed under LGPL in proprietary software is in regards to using modified versions of LGPL code: modified LGPL code must be published separately under the same license.
      
      The full license may be found here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.en.html
  • Mozilla Public License 2.0
    • This license allows code to be reused in a larger distribution under a different license. As such it is often used by corporations when making contributions to open source, allowing their own use and distribution.
      
      The full license may be found here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/
  • The Unlicense
    • This license is designed to be simple, and allow full freedoms to end users to do with code as they wish. Use this license if you have little attention span towards how others use your code. Traditionally, instead of placing the license in a file named LICENSE.txt, it will be placed in a file named UNLICENSE.txt, allowing users looking for fully open source works to use your code.
    • This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.
      
      Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.
      
      In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this software under copyright law.
      
      THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,
      
      ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
      
      For more information, please refer to
  • No License
    • Without choosing a license, rights will be determined based on where repositories are hosted. For example, on github, default copyright restrictions will be applied, as according to Brian Doll, GitHub's VP of Marketing: "Code without an explicit license is protected by copyright and is by default All Rights Reserved. The person or people who wrote the code are protected as such. Any time you're using software you didn't write, licensing should be considered and abided." This practice of protecting code with All Rights Reserved is common across code repository hosts and should be considered the default when publishing code without a license to a 3rd party host.