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While the goals behind the terms are different, open-source licenses and free software licenses describe the same type of licenses. [13] 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.
There are licenses accepted by the OSI which are not free as per the Free Software Definition. The Open Source Definition allows for further restrictions like price, type of contribution and origin of the contribution, e.g. the case of the NASA Open Source Agreement, which requires the code to be "original" work.
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.
In the 90s, the term "open source" was coined as an alternative label for free software, and specific criteria were laid out to determine which licenses covered free and open-source software. [15] [16] Two active members of the free software community, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI). [17]
Software copyright is the application of copyright in law to machine-readable software. While many of the legal principles and policy debates concerning software copyright have close parallels in other domains of copyright law, there are a number of distinctive issues that arise with software.
A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Since the 1970s, software copyright has been recognized in the United States. Despite the copyright being recognized, most companies prefer to sell licenses rather than copies of the software because it enables them to enforce stricter terms on redistribution.
It and the official definitions of free software by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) essentially cover the same software licenses. [6] [23] Nevertheless, there is a values difference between the free software and open source movements: the former is more based on ethics and values, the latter on pragmatism. [6]
For information on software-related licences, see Comparison of free and open-source software licenses. A variety of free-content licences exist, some of them tailored to a specific purpose. Also listed are open-hardware licences, which may be used on design documents of and custom-made software for open-source hardware.