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Open source license - Definition and Overview |
| Related Words: Ok, Agency, Allow, Anarchy, Assignment, Assumption, Authority, Authorization, Brevet, Certificate, Chaos, Charge, Charter, Commission |
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An open-source license is a copyright license for computer software that makes the source code available under terms that allow for modification and royalty-free redistribution. One popular (and sometimes considered normative) set of open source licenses are those approved by the Open Source Initiative based on their Open Source Definition.
Software in the public domain (that is, with no copyright license at all), meets those criteria as long as all source code is made available, and is therefore recognized by the OSI and entitled to use their service mark. In addition, OSI has approved the following licenses as of 2003:
Non-OSI open source licenses
Licenses which are source-available but not OSI-Certified include:
- Solaris
- PGP
- SpamPal (an anti-spam program with a license which prohibits spamming as a means of selling the program or derivative works. Since that restricts a field of endeavor, it's not open source according to the Open Source Definition.)
Comparisons
It should be noted that the Free Software Foundation has related but distinct criteria for evaluating whether or not a license qualifies a program as free software. See Free software license.
Likewise, the Debian project has its own criteria, the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which in many ways was a precursor to the Open Source Definition.
See also
External links
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