60-555: BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses , imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system . The original version has since been revised, and its descendants are referred to as modified BSD licenses. BSD
120-590: A copyleft license and another license is often only a one-way compatibility, making the copyleft license (GPL, and most other copyleft licenses) incompatible with proprietary commercial licenses, as well as with many non-proprietary licenses. This "one-way compatibility" characteristic has been criticized by the Apache Foundation , which licenses under the more permissive Apache license , such non-copyleft licenses being often less complicated and making for better license compatibility. An example of
180-547: A public-domain-equivalent license , the same way as MIT No Attribution License . It is known as "0BSD", "Zero-Clause BSD", or "Free Public License 1.0.0". It was created by Rob Landley and first used in Toybox when he was disappointed after using GPL license in BusyBox . Copyright (C) [year] by [copyright holder] <[email]> Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee
240-512: A clause not found in later licenses, known as the "advertising clause". This clause eventually became controversial, as it required authors of all works deriving from a BSD-licensed work to include an acknowledgment of the original source in all advertising material. This was clause number 3 in the original license text: Copyright (c) <year>, <copyright holder> All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that
300-1223: A clause restricting use of the names of contributors for endorsement of a derived work without specific permission. Copyright <year> <copyright holder> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. An even more simplified version has come into use, primarily known for its usage in FreeBSD . It
360-401: A combined work including copyleft licensed components (which have a viral property leading potentially to a derived work ), proper isolation/separation needs to be maintained. With individually licensed source code files, multiple non-reciprocal licenses (such as permissive licenses or own proprietary code) can be separated, while the combined compiled program could be re-licensed (but that
420-709: A combined work or derivative work of the GPLed kernel—is ambiguous and controversial. In 2015, the CDDL to GPL compatibility question reemerged when the linux distribution Ubuntu announced that it would include OpenZFS by default. In 2016, Ubuntu announced that a legal review resulted in the conclusion that it is legally safe to use ZFS as a binary kernel module in Linux. Others accepted Ubuntu's conclusion; for instance lawyer James E.J. Bottomley argued "a convincing theory of harm" cannot be developed, making it impossible to bring
480-533: A derivative work of the Linux kernel, and announced their intent to achieve clarity in this question, even by going to court. On October 8, 2015, Creative Commons concluded that the CC BY-SA 4.0 is inbound compatible with the GPLv3. The Creative Commons Licenses are widely used for content, but not all combinations of the seven recommended and supported licenses are compatible with each other. Additionally, this
540-490: A framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to legally combine source code from separately-licensed software in order to create and publish a new program. Proprietary licenses are generally program-specific and incompatible; authors must negotiate to combine code. Copyleft licenses are commonly deliberately incompatible with proprietary licenses, in order to prevent copyleft software from being re-licensed under
600-542: A license that has excellent compatibility with other FOSS licenses is the Artistic License 2.0, due to its re-licensing clause which allows redistribution of the source code under any other FOSS license. You may Distribute your Modified Version as Source (either gratis or for a Distributor Fee, and with or without a Compiled form of the Modified Version) [...] provided that you do at least ONE of
660-544: A proprietary license, turning it into proprietary software . Many copyleft licenses explicitly allow relicensing under some other copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses are (with minor exceptions) compatible with everything, including proprietary licenses; there is thus no guarantee that all derived works will remain under a permissive license. License compatibility can be defined around the concepts of "collective/combined/aggregated work" and " derivative work ". The first " collective work " license compatibility definition allows
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#1732779871834720-594: A similar 2-clause license. This version has been vetted as an Open source license by the OSI as the "Simplified BSD License." The ISC license without the 'and/or' wording is functionally equivalent, and endorsed by the OpenBSD project as a license template for new contributions. The BSD 0-clause license goes further than the 2-clause license by dropping the requirements to include the copyright notice, license text, or disclaimer in either source or binary forms. Doing so forms
780-427: A stronger isolation is required. This can be achieved by separating the programs by an own process and allowing communication only via binary ABIs or other indirect means. Examples are Android 's kernel space -to- user space separation via Bionic , or Linux distros which have proprietary binary blobs included despite having a strong copyleft kernel . While for some domains agreement exists if an isolation
840-579: Is both a license and a class of license (generally referred to as BSD-like). The modified BSD license (in wide use today) is very similar to the license originally used for the BSD version of Unix . The BSD license is a simple license that merely requires that all code retain the BSD license notice if redistributed in source code format, or reproduce the notice if redistributed in binary format. The BSD license (unlike some other licenses e.g. GPL ) does not require that source code be distributed at all. In addition to
900-462: Is compatible with the GNU GPL. The FSF encourages users to be specific when referring to the license by name (i.e. not simply referring to it as "a BSD license" or "BSD-style") to avoid confusion with the original BSD license. This version allows unlimited redistribution for any purpose as long as its copyright notices and the license's disclaimers of warranty are maintained. The license also contains
960-565: Is distributed exclusively under the terms of GPLv2. The Free Software Foundation-recommended GNU Free Documentation License is incompatible with the GPL license, and text licensed under the GFDL cannot be incorporated into GPL software. Therefore, the Debian project decided, in a 2006 resolution, to license documentation under the GPL. The FLOSS Manuals foundation followed Debian in 2007. In 2009,
1020-621: Is hereby granted. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. The SPDX License List contains extra BSD license variations. Examples include: The FreeBSD project argues on
1080-484: Is no reason not to use software already using it. The advertising clause was removed from the license text in the official BSD license on July 22, 1999, by William Hoskins, Director of the Office of Technology Licensing for UC Berkeley. On January 31, 2012, UC Berkeley Executive Director of the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Alliances established that licensees and distributors are no longer required to include
1140-454: Is not required). Such source-code file separation is too weak for copyleft/reciprocal licenses (such as the GPL), as they then require the complete work to be re-licensed under the reciprocal license as being derivative. A slightly stronger approach is to have separation at the linking stage with binary object code ( static linking ), where all the components of the resulting program are part of
1200-537: Is often impossible, due to the many contributors involved, the Mozilla re-licensing project assumes that achieving 95% is enough for the re-licensing of the complete code base. Others in the FOSS domain, such as Eric S. Raymond , came to different conclusions regarding the requirements for re-licensing of an entire code base. An early example of a project that successfully re-licensed for license incompatibility reasons
1260-461: Is often only a one-way directional compatibility, requiring a complete work to be licensed under the most restrictive license of the parent works. JSON developer Douglas Crockford , inspired by the words of then President Bush, formulated the "evil-doers" JSON license ("The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.") This subjective and moral license clause led to license incompatibility problems with other open source licenses , and resulted in
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#17327798718341320-705: Is problematic is the CDDL licensed ZFS file system with the GPLv2 licensed Linux kernel . Despite that both are free software under a copyleft license, ZFS is not distributed with most linux distros like Debian (but is distributed with FreeBSD ) as the CDDL is considered incompatible with the GPL'ed Linux kernel, by the Free Software Foundation and some parties with relations with the FSF. The legal interpretation—of if and when this combination constitutes
1380-483: Is suitable, there are domains in dispute and up to now untested in court. For instance, in 2015 the SFC sued VMware in an ongoing dispute whether loadable kernel modules (LKM's) are derivative works of the GPL'd Linux kernel or not. Licenses common to free and open-source software (FOSS) are not necessarily compatible with each other, and this can make it legally impossible to mix (or link ) open-source code if
1440-555: Is the Mozilla project and their Firefox browser . The source code of Netscape 's Communicator 4.0 browser was originally released in 1998 under the Netscape Public License / Mozilla Public License but was criticised by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and OSI for being incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL). Around 2001 Time Warner , exercising its rights under
1500-650: The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike as its main license, in addition to the previously used GFDL , so as to have improved license compatibility with the greater free content ecosystem. Another interesting case was Google 's re-licensing of GPLv2-licensed Linux kernel header files to the BSD license for their Android library Bionic . Google claimed that the header files were clean of any copyright-able work, reducing them to non-copyrightable "facts", and thus not covered by
1560-435: The "derived work" combined from code under various licenses as whole is applied to the copyleft license. License compatibility: The characteristic of a license according to which the code distributed under this license may be integrated into a bigger software that will be distributed under another license . [emphasis added] A combined work consists of multiple differently-licensed parts (avoiding relicensing ). To achieve
1620-422: The BSD license is great for code you don't care about. I'll use it myself. If there’s a library routine that I just want to say 'hey, this is useful to anybody and I’m not going to maintain this,' I’ll put it under the BSD license. -- Linus Torvalds at LinuxCon 2016 The BSD license family is one of the oldest and most broadly used license families in the free and open-source software ecosystem, and has been
1680-486: The Free Software Foundation, and have been vetted as open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative . The original, 4-clause BSD license has not been accepted as an open source license and, although the original is considered to be a free software license by the FSF, the FSF does not consider it to be compatible with the GPL due to the advertising clause. Over the years I've become convinced that
1740-547: The GPL. This interpretation was challenged by Raymond Nimmer, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center . Apps and drivers of Android, which provide an increasing amount of Android's functionality, have been gradually relicensed from permissive to proprietary licenses. In 2014, the FreeCAD project changed their license from GPL to LGPLv2, due to GPLv3/GPLv2 incompatibilities. Also in 2014, Gang Garrison 2
1800-456: The JSON license not being a free and open-source license. Sometimes projects wind up with incompatible licenses, and the only feasible way to solve it is the re-licensing of the incompatible parts. Re-licensing is achieved by contacting all involved developers and other parties and getting their agreement for the changed license. While in the free and open-source domain achieving 100% agreement
1860-520: The Modified Version, and of any works derived from it, be made freely available in that license fees are prohibited but Distributor Fees are allowed. [emphasis added] The Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)—a weak copyleft license in-between the GPL license and BSD / MIT permissive licenses —tries to address license compatibility problems by permitting, without re-licensing,
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1920-600: The Netscape Public License, and at the request of the Mozilla Foundation, re-licensed all code in Mozilla that was under the Netscape Public License (including code by other contributors) to an MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/ LGPL 2.1 tri-license , thus achieving GPL-compatibility. The Vorbis library was originally licensed as LGPL , but in 2001, with the endorsement of Richard Stallman , the license
1980-579: The VLC library, from the GPLv2 to the LGPLv2, to achieve better compatibility. In July 2013, the software re-licensed under the Mozilla Public License , the VLC application would then be resubmitted to the iOS App Store . The Free Software Foundation's GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2 is not compatible with the widely used Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which
2040-496: The Wikimedia Foundation switched from the GFDL to a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license as the main license for their projects. Responsible AI Licenses (or RAILs) are generally not compatible with the GPL. This is because RAILs include "use restrictions" that limit the ways users can make use of the materials licensed under RAILs, whereas the GPL prohibits such restrictions. Another case where GPL compatibility
2100-520: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.237 via cp1104 cp1104, Varnish XID 210933081 Upstream caches: cp1104 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:44:31 GMT License compatibility License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such
2160-658: The above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software was developed by the <copyright holder>. The name of the <copyright holder> may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED `'AS IS″ AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. The original BSD license contained
2220-474: The acknowledgement within advertising materials. Accordingly, the advertising clause 3 of the original 4-clause BSD license for any and all software officially licensed under a UC Berkeley version of the BSD license, was deleted in its entirety. Other BSD distributions removed the clause, but many similar clauses remain in BSD-derived code from other sources, and unrelated code using a derived license. While
2280-478: The adoption of the 4-clause BSD license used a license that is clearly ancestral to the 4-clause BSD license. These releases include some parts of 4.3BSD-Tahoe (1988), about 1000 files, and Net/1 (1989). Although largely replaced by the 4-clause license, this license can be found in 4.3BSD-Reno, Net/2, and 4.4BSD-Alpha. Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holder>. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that
2340-520: The advantages of BSD-style licenses for companies and commercial use-cases due to their license compatibility with proprietary licenses and general flexibility, stating that the BSD-style licenses place only "minimal restrictions on future behavior" and are not "legal time-bombs", unlike copyleft licenses . The BSD License allows proprietary use and allows the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary products. Works based on
2400-599: The case to court. Eben Moglen , co-author of the GPLv3 and founder of the SFLC , argued that while the letters of the GPL might be violated the spirit of both licenses is adhered to, which would be the relevant issue in court. On the other hand, Bradley M. Kuhn and Karen M. Sandler , from the Software Freedom Conservancy , argued that Ubuntu would violate both licenses, as a binary ZFS module would be
2460-548: The clause presented a legal problem for those wishing to publish BSD-licensed software which relies upon separate programs using the GNU GPL : the advertising clause is incompatible with the GPL, which does not allow the addition of restrictions beyond those it already imposes; because of this, the GPL's publisher, the Free Software Foundation , recommends developers not use the license, though it states there
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2520-507: The components have different licenses. For example, software that combined code released under version 1.1 of the Mozilla Public License (MPL) with code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) could not be distributed without violating one of the terms of the licenses; this despite both licenses being approved by both the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation . License compatibility between
2580-829: The following conditions are met: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. Other projects, such as NetBSD, use
2640-781: The following conditions are met: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> AS IS AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. This clause
2700-533: The following: […] (c) allow anyone who receives a copy of the Modified Version to make the Source form of the Modified Version available to others under (i) the Original License or (ii) a license that permits the licensee to freely copy, modify and redistribute the Modified Version using the same licensing terms that apply to the copy that the licensee received, and requires that the Source form of
2760-400: The incompatibility. However, code under the later licenses can be combined with code licensed under GPL version 2 or later. Most software released under GPLv2 allow you to use the terms of later versions of the GPL as well, and some have exception clauses that allow combining them with software that is under different licenses or license versions. The Linux kernel is a notable exception that
2820-457: The inspiration for a number of other licenses. Many FOSS software projects use a BSD license, for instance the BSD OS family (FreeBSD etc.), Google 's Bionic or Toybox. As of 2015 the BSD 3-clause license ranked in popularity number five according to Black Duck Software and sixth according to GitHub data. Permissive free software license Too Many Requests If you report this error to
2880-569: The license as the FreeBSD License, states that it is compatible with the GNU GPL. In addition, the FSF encourages users to be specific when referring to the license by name (i.e. not simply referring to it as "a BSD license" or "BSD-style"), as it does with the modified/new BSD license, to avoid confusion with the original BSD license. Copyright (c) <year>, <copyright holder> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that
2940-671: The material may be released under a proprietary license as closed source software, allowing usual commercial usages under them. The 3-clause BSD license, like most permissive licenses , is compatible with almost all FOSS licenses (and as well proprietary licenses). Two variants of the license, the New BSD License/Modified BSD License (3-clause), and the Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License (2-clause) have been verified as GPL - compatible free software licenses by
3000-516: The mixing of CDDL-licensed source-code files with source-code files under other licenses by providing that the resulting binary can be licensed and sold under a different license as long as the source code is still available under CDDL. To minimize license proliferation and license incompatibilities in the FOSS ecosystem, some organizations (the Free Software Foundation, for instance) and individuals (David A. Wheeler), argue that compatibility with
3060-400: The new combination would have the GPL applied to the whole (but the other license would not so apply). Copyleft software licenses are not inherently GPL-compatible; even the GPLv2 license by itself is not compatible with GPLv3 or LGPLv3. If a developer tried to combine code released under either of the later GPL licenses with GPLv2 code, that would violate section 6 of GPLv2, the source of
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#17327798718343120-520: The original (4-clause) license used for BSD, several derivative licenses have emerged that are also commonly referred to as a "BSD license". Today, the typical BSD license is the 3-clause version, which is revised from the original 4-clause version. In all BSD licenses as following, <year> is the year of the copyright. As published in BSD, <copyright holder> is "Regents of the University of California". Some releases of BSD prior to
3180-401: The original license is sometimes referred to as the "BSD-old", the resulting 3-clause version is sometimes referred to by "BSD-new." Other names include new BSD , "revised BSD", "BSD-3", or "3-clause BSD". This version has been vetted as an Open source license by the OSI as "The BSD License". The Free Software Foundation, which refers to the license as the "Modified BSD License", states that it
3240-426: The same process and address space . This satisfies "weak copyleft/standard reciprocal" combined works (such as LGPL licensed ones), but not "strong copyleft/strong reciprocal" combined works. While it is commonly accepted that linking ( static and even dynamic linking ) constitutes a derivative of a strong copyleft'd work, there are alternate interpretations. For combined works with "strong copyleft" modules,
3300-399: The usage of variously-licensed works in a combined context: the characteristic of two (or more) licenses according to which the codes distributed under these licenses may be put together in order to create a bigger distributable software . [emphasis added] A stronger definition includes the capability to change the license. The most prominent example is the copyleft license 's demand that
3360-422: The widely used GPL is an important feature of software licenses. Many of the most common free-software licenses, especially the permissive licenses , such as the original MIT/X license , BSD licenses (in the three-clause and two-clause forms, though not the original four-clause form), MPL 2.0, and LGPL , are GPL-compatible . That is, their code can be combined with a program under the GPL without conflict, and
3420-588: Was a problem for Misplaced Pages , for instance. Therefore, at the request of the Wikimedia Foundation , the FSF added a time-limited section, to version 1.3 of the GFDL, that allowed specific types of websites using the GFDL to additionally offer their work under the CC BY-SA license. Following this, in June 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation migrated their projects ( Misplaced Pages , etc.) by dual licensing to
3480-471: Was changed to the less restrictive BSD license , to accelerate the library's adoption. The VLC project has a complicated license history due to license incompatibility, and in 2007 the project decided, for license compatibility, to not upgrade to the just released GPLv3 . In October 2011, after the VLC had been removed from the Apple App Store at the start of 2011, the VLC project re-licensed
3540-457: Was in use there as early as 29 April 1999 and likely well before. The primary difference between it and the New BSD (3-clause) License is that it omits the non-endorsement clause. The FreeBSD version of the license also adds a further disclaimer about views and opinions expressed in the software, though this is not commonly included by other projects. The Free Software Foundation, which refers to
3600-432: Was objected to on the grounds that as people changed the license to reflect their name or organization it led to escalating advertising requirements when programs were combined in a software distribution: every occurrence of the license with a different name required a separate acknowledgment. In arguing against it, Richard Stallman has stated that he counted 75 such acknowledgments in a 1997 version of NetBSD . In addition,
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