license
Lookup open source licenses summarized & explained in plain English.
Software Sharing for Modern Businesses.
Engage the developer community with your company's core software products. Fair Source Software (FSS):
- is publicly available to read;
- allows use, modification, and redistribution with minimal restrictions to protect the producer’s business model; and
- undergoes delayed Open Source publication (DOSP).
The intention is for the first point to be a bright line, and for the second to invite exploration. We expect Fair Source licenses to emerge and evolve and shake out into a few clear winners over time, as companies apply Fair Source within their own particular business context.
Open Source License Tool Platform. Choose the right license to protect your project.
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Blue Oak Council opens the software commons up to those who can’t find or afford specialized legal help by bringing experienced lawyer-technologists together to publish free, practical materials about software licenses.
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The WTFPL is a very permissive license for software and other scientific or artistic works that offers a great degree of freedom. In fact, it is probably the best license out there. This site provides information on how to make the most of the WTFPL. Get started now!
A compendium of absurd, funny, and downright bad licenses. A table of contents is provided here with titles and a summary of what the license does. Sources, when available, are provided in the descriptions. Also, don't take this seriously.
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simple, standard, plain-language software licenses.
The PolyForm Project is a group of experienced licensing lawyers and technologists developing simple, standardized, plain-language software source code licenses. PolyForm aims to fill gaps in the menu of standardized software licenses, like non-commercial, trial, and small-business-only terms.
Interactive License Selector. Quickly match license types through simple Q&A.
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The Functional Source License (FSL) is a mostly permissive non-compete license that converts to Apache 2.0 or MIT after two years. It is designed for SaaS companies that value both user freedom and developer sustainability. FSL provides everything a developer needs to use and learn from your software without harmful free-riding.
Make licensing easy for everyone.
Copyright and licensing is difficult, especially when reusing software from different projects that are released under various different licenses. REUSE was started by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) to provide a set of recommendations to make licensing your Free Software projects easy, comprehensive, unambiguous, and machine-readable.