View source for Free Software License

A Free Software Licence must grant people all the freedoms listed in one of the free software definitions. See for example the [[Free Software Definition]] published by [[Free Software Foundation]] (FSF).

The FSF distinguish the following main types of free software licenses:

*[[Copyleft]] licenses, under which the author retains copyright and permits redistribution and modification under terms to ensure that all modified versions remain free for as long as the author wishes. The [[General Public License]] (GPL) is the most prominent [[Copyleft]] license.
*[[BSD-Style License]], under which the author retains copyright protection solely to disclaim warranty and require proper attribution of modified works, but permits redistribution and modification in any work, even proprietary ones for as long as the author wishes.
*[[Public Domain]] software, under which the author has abandoned the copyright and cannot impose any sort of restriction on its use, even if he subsequently so desires.

The difference between the first two types seems to be that the Copyleft or GPL license insists that all modified versions must remain free, while the [[BSD-Style License]] only requires proper attribution of modified works.

Both the [[Free Software Foundation]] and [[Open Source Initiative]] publish lists of licenses that they find to comply with their definition of free software and open-source software respectively. These lists are necessarily incomplete, because many specific licenses remain unknown by either organization. While the free software and open source movements have a somewhat different point of view, it is rare that a license is announced as being in-compliance by one and not by the other

==Links==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative
*List of FSF approved software licences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FSF_approved_software_licences
*List of OSI approved software licences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OSI_approved_software_licences

[[Category:FOSS Concepts]]