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37-503: The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized open source community of developers. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License , a permissive open-source license for free and open-source software (FOSS). The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus-based development process and an open and pragmatic software license, which is to say that it allows developers, who receive

74-503: A "Project Management Committee" in the bylaws), some of which have a number of sub-projects. Unlike some other organizations that host FOSS projects, before a project is hosted at Apache it has to be licensed to the ASF with a grant or contributor agreement. In this way, the ASF gains the necessary intellectual property rights for the development and distribution of all its projects. The Board of Directors of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)

111-522: A BSD conference in 1999. It is a word play on copyright , copyleft and copy center . We call them “pushover licenses” because they can't say “no” when one user tries to deny freedom to others.." In the Free Software Foundation 's guide to license compatibility and relicensing, Richard Stallman defines permissive licenses as "pushover licenses", comparing them to those people who "can't say no", because they are seen as granting

148-545: A contributor's own patents. This license requires the preservation of the copyright notice and disclaimer . The Apache License is permissive ; unlike copyleft licenses, it does not require a derivative work of the software, or modifications to the original, to be distributed using the same license. It still requires application of the same license to all unmodified parts. In every licensed file, original copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices must be preserved (excluding notices that do not pertain to any part of

185-706: A cultural appropriator or anything like that, I had just seen a documentary about Geronimo and the last days of a Native American tribe called the Apaches right, who succumbed to the invasion from the West, from the United States, and they were the last tribe to give up their territory and for me that almost romantically represented what I felt we were doing with this web-server project..." Apache divides its software development activities into separate semi-autonomous areas called "top-level projects" (formally known as

222-515: A display generated by the derivative works (wherever such third-party notices normally appear). The contents of the NOTICE file do not modify the license, as they are for informational purposes only, and adding more attribution notices as addenda to the NOTICE text is permissible, provided that these notices cannot be understood as modifying the license. Modifications may have appropriate copyright notices, and may provide different license terms for

259-525: A restriction that says a redistributor cannot add more restrictions. Examples include the CDDL and MsPL . However such restrictions also make the license incompatible with permissive free-software licenses. While they have been in use since the mid-1980s, several authors noted an increase in the popularity of permissive licenses during the 2010s. As of 2015, the MIT License , a permissive license,

296-488: Is assigned to their independent project management committee; the participants in each project provide direction, not the board. The board is elected annually by the ASF membership. Since September 18, 2024, the board of directors has been: Apache License The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use

333-745: Is linked to the Apache HTTP Server, development beginning in February 1993. A group of eight developers started working on enhancing the NCSA HTTPd daemon . They came to be known as the Apache Group. On March 25, 1999, the Apache Software Foundation was formed. The first official meeting of the Apache Software Foundation was held on April 13, 1999. The initial members of the Apache Software Foundation consisted of

370-418: Is provided without the risk of platform lock-in . Among the ASF's objectives are: to provide legal protection to volunteers working on Apache projects, and to prevent the "Apache" brand name from being used by other organizations without permission. The ASF also holds several ApacheCon conferences each year, highlighting Apache projects and related technology. The history of the Apache Software Foundation

407-516: Is responsible for management and oversight of the business and affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Bylaws. This includes management of the corporate assets (funds, intellectual property, trademarks, and support equipment), appointment of a President and corporate officers managing the core operations of the ASF, and allocation of corporate resources for the benefit of Apache projects. Technical decision-making authority for every Apache project

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444-441: Is somewhat standardized by international agreements, contract law differs wildly among jurisdictions. So what the license means in different jurisdictions may vary and is hard to predict." Permissive free software licence A permissive software license , sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how

481-448: Is the most popular free software license, followed by GPLv2 . A "permissive" license is simply a non-copyleft open source license. Sometimes the word "permissive" is considered too ambiguous, because all free software licenses are "permissive", in the sense that they all allow to modify and redistribute the source code. In most cases the real opposition is between copyleft licenses and non-copyleft ones, thus some authors prefer to use

518-586: The 4-clause BSD license , the PHP License , and the OpenSSL License , have clauses requiring advertising materials to credit the copyright holder, which made them incompatible with copyleft licenses. Popular modern permissive licenses, however, such as the MIT License , the 3-clause BSD license and the zlib license , don't include advertising clauses and are generally compatible with copyleft licenses. Some licenses do not allow derived works to add

555-630: The Apache HTTP Server . Its initial license was essentially the same as the original 4-clause BSD license , with only the names of the organizations changed, and with an additional clause forbidding derivative works from bearing the Apache name. In July 1999, the Berkeley Software Distribution accepted the argument put to it by the Free Software Foundation and retired their advertising clause (clause 3) to form

592-638: The Apache Group: Brian Behlendorf , Ken Coar , Miguel Gonzales, Mark Cox, Lars Eilebrecht , Ralf S. Engelschall, Roy T. Fielding , Dean Gaudet, Ben Hyde, Jim Jagielski , Alexei Kosut, Martin Kraemer, Ben Laurie , Doug MacEachern, Aram Mirzadeh, Sameer Parekh , Cliff Skolnick, Marc Slemko, William (Bill) Stoddard, Paul Sutton, Randy Terbush and Dirk-Willem van Gulik . After a series of additional meetings to elect board members and resolve other legal matters regarding incorporation,

629-637: The Apache License with the LLVM exception is used, then it is compatible with GPLv2. In October 2012, 8,708 projects located at SourceForge.net were available under the terms of the Apache License. In a blog post from May 2008, Google mentioned that over 25% of the nearly 100,000 projects then hosted on Google Code were using the Apache License, including the Android operating system . As of 2015 , according to Black Duck Software and GitHub ,

666-534: The Apache license is the third most popular license in the FOSS domain after MIT License and GPLv2 . The OpenBSD project does not consider the Apache License 2.0 to be an acceptable free license because of its patent provisions. The OpenBSD policy believes that when the license forces one to give up a legal right that one otherwise has, that license is no longer free. Moreover, the project objects to involving contract law with copyright law, stating "...Copyright law

703-498: The BSD, MIT and Apache licenses are extremely permissive, requiring little more than attributing the original portions of the licensed code to the original developers in your own code and/or documentation." Copyleft licenses generally require the reciprocal publication of the source code of any modified versions under the original work's copyleft license. Permissive licenses, in contrast, do not try to guarantee that modified versions of

740-625: The Work." Through an in terrorem clause, if the user sues anyone alleging that the software or a contribution within it constitutes patent infringement, any such patent licenses for that work are terminated. The Apache Software Foundation and the Free Software Foundation agree that the Apache License 2.0 is a free software license , compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3, meaning that code under GPLv3 and Apache License 2.0 can be combined, as long as

777-590: The copyright notice and this notice are preserved. This file is offered as-is, without any warranty. The Open Source Initiative defines a permissive software license as a "non- copyleft license that guarantees the freedoms to use, modify and redistribute". GitHub 's choosealicense website describes the permissive MIT license as "[letting] people do anything they want with your code as long as they provide attribution back to you and don't hold you liable ." California Western School of Law 's newmediarights.com defined them as follows: "The 'BSD-like' licenses such as

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814-417: The derivative works). In every licensed file changed, a notification must be added stating that changes have been made to that file. If a NOTICE text file is included as part of the distribution of the original work, then derivative works must include a readable copy of these notices within a NOTICE text file distributed as part of the derivative works, within the source form or documentation, or within

851-430: The effective incorporation date of the Apache Software Foundation was set to June 1, 1999. Co-founder Brian Behlendorf states how the name 'Apache' was chosen: "I suggested the name Apache partly because the web technologies at the time that were launching were being called cyber this or spider that or something on those themes and I was like we need something a little more interesting, a little more romantic, not to be

888-415: The final users might not be developers at all, and in this case copyleft licenses offer them the everlasting right to access a software as free software, ensuring that it will never become closed source – while permissive licenses offer no rights at all to non-developer final users, and software released with a permissive license could theoretically become from one day to another a closed source malware without

925-566: The modifications. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, any contributions submitted by a licensee to a licensor will be under the terms of the license without any terms and conditions, but this does not preclude any separate agreements with the licensor regarding these contributions. The Apache License 2.0 attempts to forestall potential patent litigation in Section 3. The user is granted a patent license from each contributor to "make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer

962-405: The new 3-clause BSD license. In 2000, Apache did likewise and created the Apache License 1.1, in which derived products are no longer required to include attribution in their advertising materials, only in their documentation. Individual packages licensed under the 1.1 version may have used different wording due to varying requirements for attribution or mark identification, but the binding terms were

999-695: The public domain, on the grounds that this can be legally problematic in some jurisdictions. Public-domain-equivalent licenses are an attempt to solve this problem, providing a fallback permissive license for cases where renunciation of copyright is not legally possible, and sometimes also including a disclaimer of warranties similar to most permissive licenses. In general permissive licenses have good license compatibility with most other software licenses in most situations. Due to their non-restrictiveness, most permissive software licenses are even compatible with copyleft licenses, which are incompatible with most other licenses. Some older permissive licenses, such as

1036-541: The resulting software is licensed under the GPLv3. The Free Software Foundation considers all versions of the Apache License to be incompatible with the previous GPL versions 1 and 2. Furthermore, it considers Apache License versions before 2.0 incompatible with GPLv3. Because of version 2.0's patent license requirements, the Free Software Foundation recommends it over other non-copyleft licenses. If

1073-420: The right to modify and exploit source code written by others and possibly incorporate it into proprietary code and make money with it (and therefore these see permissive licenses as offering them a "right"), while for other developers it might be more valuable to know that nobody will ever capitalize what has mostly been their work (and therefore these see copyleft licenses as offering them a "right"). Furthermore,

1110-443: The same. In January 2004, ASF decided to depart from the BSD model and produced the Apache License 2.0. The stated goals of the license included making it easier for non-ASF projects to use, improving compatibility with GPL -based software, allowing the license to be included by reference instead of listed in every file, clarifying the license on contributions, and requiring a patent license on contributions that necessarily infringe

1147-643: The software can be used, modified, and redistributed, usually including a warranty disclaimer . Examples include the GNU All-permissive License , MIT License , BSD licenses , Apple Public Source License and Apache license . As of 2016, the most popular free-software license is the permissive MIT license . The following is the full text of the simple GNU All-permissive License : Copyright <YEAR>, <AUTHORS> Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty, provided

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1184-501: The software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software under the terms of the license, without concern for royalties . The ASF and its projects release their software products under the Apache License. The license is also used by many non-ASF projects. Beginning in 1995, the Apache Group (later the Apache Software Foundation) released successive versions of

1221-421: The software freely, to redistribute it under non-free terms. Each project is managed by a self-selected team of technical experts who are active contributors to the project. The ASF is a meritocracy , implying that membership of the foundation is granted only to volunteers who have actively contributed to Apache projects. The ASF is considered a second-generation open-source organization, in that commercial support

1258-457: The software will remain free and publicly available, generally requiring only that the original copyright notice be retained. As a result, derivative works, or future versions, of permissively-licensed software can be released as proprietary software. Defining how liberal a license is, however, is not something easily quantifiable, and often depends on the goals of the final users. If the latter are developers, for some it might be valuable to have

1295-420: The term "non-copyleft" instead of "permissive". Berkeley had what we called "copycenter," which is "take it down to the copy center and make as many copies as you want." Copycenter is a term originally used to explain the modified BSD license , a permissive free-software license. The term was presented by computer scientist and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) contributor Marshall Kirk McKusick at

1332-413: The user even knowing it. Permissive licenses offer more extensive license compatibility than copyleft licenses, which cannot generally be freely combined and mixed, because their reciprocity requirements conflict with each other. Computer Associates Int'l v. Altai used the term "public domain" to refer to works that have become widely shared and distributed under permission, rather than work that

1369-646: Was deliberately put into the public domain. However, permissive licenses are not actually equivalent to releasing a work into the public domain . Permissive licenses often do stipulate some limited requirements, such as that the original authors must be credited ( attribution ). If a work is truly in the public domain, this is usually not legally required, but a United States copyright registration requires disclosing material that has been previously published, and attribution may still be considered an ethical requirement in academia . Advocates of permissive licenses often recommend against attempting to release software to

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