Free license

For other uses, see Free license (disambiguation).

A free license or open license^[1]^[2] is a license agreement which contains conditions permitted to the user from the holder on a specific list of uses for his work, which gives him four major freedoms.

Without a special license, these uses are prohibited by the laws of copyright.

Most free licenses are worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and perpetual (see Copyright durations).

Free licenses are often the basis of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding projects.

The invention of the term "free license" and the focus on the rights of users were connected to the sharing traditions of the hacker culture of the 1970s public domain software ecosystem, the social and political free software movement (since 1980) and the Open source movement (since the 1990s).^[3]

These rights were codified by different groups and organizations for different domains in Free Software Definition, Open Source Definition, Debian Free Software Guidelines, Definition of Free Cultural Works and the Open definition.^[1] These definitions were then transformed into licenses, utilizing the copyright as legal mechanism. Since then, ideas of free/open licenses spread into different spheres of society.

Open source, free culture (unified as Free and open source movement), anticopyright, Wikimedia Foundation projects, Public Domain advocacy groups and pirate parties are connected with free and open licenses.

Philosophy

Main articles: Free software movement § Philosophy and Free culture movement

Classification and licenses

Network of licenses (and years of license creation).

Problems

By countries

Creative Commons has affiliates in more than 100 jurisdictions all over the world.

European Union

EUPL was created in the European Union.

Germany

Harald Welte created gpl-violations.org

References

1 2 Open Definition 2.1 on 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."
↑ The Open Source Definition
↑ Kelty, Christpher M. (2008). "The Cultural Significance of free Software - Two Bits" (PDF). Duke University press - 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.
↑ PDDL 1.0 on opendatacommons.org

External links

Free and open-source software

General	Alternative terms for free software Comparison of open-source and closed-source software Comparison of source code hosting facilities Free software Free software project directories Gratis versus libre Long-term support Open-source software Open-source software development Outline

Software packages	Audio Bioinformatics Codecs Collaboration Configuration management Geophysics Health Mathematics Operating systems Programming languages Routing Statistics Television Video games Web applications Content management systems E-commerce Wireless drivers Word processors Android apps iOS apps Commercial Trademarked Formerly proprietary

History	BSD GNU Haiku Linux Mozilla

Community	Free software movement Open-source movement Organizations Events

Licenses	Apache APSL Artistic Beerware Boost BSD CC0 CDDL EPL GNU GPL GNU LGPL ISC MIT MPL Ms-PL/RL WTFPL zlib

License types and standards	Comparison of free and open-source software licenses Contributor License Agreement Copyfree Copyleft Debian Free Software Guidelines Definition of Free Cultural Works Free license The Free Software Definition The Open Source Definition Open-source license Permissive free software licence Public domain Viral license

Challenges	Binary blob Digital rights management Free and open-source graphics device driver Lack of wireless driver support Hardware restrictions License proliferation Mozilla software rebranding Proprietary software SCO/Linux controversies Secure boot Software patents Software security Trusted Computing

Related topics	The Cathedral and the Bazaar Forking Microsoft Open Specification Promise Revolution OS

Book Category Commons Portal

Intellectual property activism

Issues and debates	Copyright infringement Copyright infringement of software Digital rights management Gripe site Intellectual property Legal aspects of file sharing Mashup videos music Music piracy Orphan works Patents Public domain Software patent debate Patent trolling

Concepts	All rights reversed Alternative compensation system Anti-copyright notice Business models for open source software Copyleft Commercial use of copyleft works Commons-based peer production Free content Free software license Infoanarchism Libertarian positions Open content Open design Open Music Model Open patent Open-source hardware Open source software Share-alike Video on demand

Movements	Access to Knowledge movement Anti-copyright Cultural environmentalism Free culture movement Free software movement

Organizations	Copyright Alliance Creative Commons Electronic Frontier Foundation Free Software Foundation Open Rights Group Organization for Transformative Works The Pirate Bay Piratbyrån Pirate Party Students for Free Culture

People	Rickard Falkvinge Lawrence Lessig Richard Stallman Peter Sunde Aaron Swartz

Documentaries	Steal This Film (2006, 2007) Good Copy Bad Copy (2007) RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (2008) TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard (2013)

Software distribution

Licenses	Beerware Floating licensing Free Free and open-source Freely redistributable Open source Proprietary Public domain

Compensation models	Commercial software Retail software Crowdfunding Freemium Freeware Adware Donationware Careware Pay what you want Open core Postcardware Shareware Nagware

Delivery methods	Digital distribution File sharing On-premises Pre-installed Product bundling Retail software Software as a service

Deceptive and/or illicit	Unwanted software bundling Malware (Spyware Trojan horse Worm) Ransomware Scareware Shovelware Vaporware

Software release life cycle	Abandonware End-of-life Long-term support Software maintenance Software maintainer Software publisher

Copy protection	Digital rights management Software protection dongle Hardware restrictions License manager Product activation Product key Software copyright Software patent Torrent poisoning

Creative Commons

Works and projects	Licenses (Public Domain Mark) Licensed works (Category) Content directories Jurisdiction ports

Major directories	Creative Commons ccMixter OpenGameArt.org Dogmazic Phlow Electrobel Newgrounds Audio portal Scripped Mininova Wikimedia (Commons)

People	Lawrence Lessig Joi Ito

See also	Free and open content Free culture movement

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, March 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.