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A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, [1] is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be used, modified, and redistributed, usually including a warranty disclaimer.
The concrete effect of strong vs. weak copyleft has yet to be tested in court. [26] Free-software licenses that use "weak" copyleft include the GNU Lesser General Public License and the Mozilla Public License. The GNU General Public License is an example of a license implementing strong copyleft.
The OSI recommends a mix of permissive and copyleft licenses, the Apache License 2.0, 2- & 3-clause BSD license, GPL, LGPL, MIT license, MPL 2.0, CDDL and EPL. License and version FSF approval
License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such 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.
Permissive licenses can be used within copyleft works, but copyleft material cannot be released under a permissive license. Some weak copyleft licenses can be used under the GPL and are said to be GPL-compatible. GPL software can only be used under the GPL or AGPL. [62]
The two main categories of free and open-source licenses are permissive and copyleft. [14] Both grant permission to change and distribute software. Typically, they require attribution and disclaim liability. [15] [16] Permissive licenses come from academia. [17] Copyleft licenses come from the free software movement. [18]
The Free Software Foundation prefers copyleft (share-alike) free-software licensing rather than permissive free-software licensing for most purposes. Its list distinguishes between free-software licenses that are compatible or incompatible with the FSF's copyleft GNU General Public License .
Sharing the package as copyleft free software can benefit the copyright holder by receiving contributions from users and hackers of the free software community. These contributions can be the support of a dedicated user community, word of mouth marketing or modifications that are made available as stipulated by a copyleft license. However, a ...