License Index
License Index
Full texts of the licences you actually meet in open source.
Every text on this site is the canonical one from the SPDX licence list, copied without edits. The grouping and the one-line notes are ours, and they are a summary, not legal advice.
Permissive
Do what you like, keep the notice. The default choice for libraries.
| Licence | SPDX | |
|---|---|---|
| MIT License Four sentences. The most used licence in open source. | MIT | OSI FSF |
| Apache License 2.0 Permissive with an explicit patent grant and a termination clause. | Apache-2.0 | OSI FSF patent grant |
| BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License Keep the copyright notice in source and binary. | BSD-2-Clause | OSI FSF |
| BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License BSD-2 plus a ban on using the author's name to endorse. | BSD-3-Clause | OSI FSF |
| ISC License MIT with the redundant wording removed. | ISC | OSI FSF |
| zlib License Short, and requires modified versions to be marked as such. | Zlib | OSI FSF |
| Boost Software License 1.0 Boost's licence. No notice required in binaries. | BSL-1.0 | OSI FSF |
| Artistic License 2.0 Perl's licence. Detailed rules for modified versions. | Artistic-2.0 | OSI FSF patent grant |
Public domain equivalent
The author steps back as far as the law allows. No notice to keep.
| Licence | SPDX | |
|---|---|---|
| The Unlicense A dedication to the public domain with a fallback licence. | Unlicense | OSI FSF |
| Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal Creative Commons dedication. Explicitly grants no patents. | CC0-1.0 | FSF |
| BSD Zero Clause License BSD with the attribution requirement dropped. | 0BSD | OSI |
Weak copyleft
Changes to the covered files stay open; the program around them need not.
| Licence | SPDX | |
|---|---|---|
| GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only LGPL-2.1 rebuilt as a set of exceptions on top of GPL-3.0. | LGPL-3.0-only | OSI FSF patent grant |
| GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 only For libraries linked into non-free programs. | LGPL-2.1-only | OSI FSF |
| Mozilla Public License 2.0 Copyleft per file. Mixes with proprietary code in one program. | MPL-2.0 | OSI FSF patent grant |
| Eclipse Public License 2.0 Eclipse's licence. Copyleft per module, with a patent grant. | EPL-2.0 | OSI FSF patent grant |
Strong copyleft
The whole derived work is distributed under the same terms.
| Licence | SPDX | |
|---|---|---|
| GNU General Public License v3.0 only Adds patents, anti-tivoisation and licence compatibility. | GPL-3.0-only | OSI FSF patent grant |
| GNU General Public License v2.0 only The Linux kernel licence. No patent clause. | GPL-2.0-only | OSI FSF |
| GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 only GPL-3.0 extended to software offered over a network. | AGPL-3.0-only | OSI FSF patent grant |