Licences for Software

1 Conversation


There are many different licence agreements that come with computer software, all of which have their advantages, disadvantages and associated legal tangles. Here we explore all of the main ones.

The GNU1 General Public License (GPL)



The nature of this license is best explained in the preamble of the document itself, which is written in a very comprehensible style:



"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to
using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.



"When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.



"To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.



"For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
rights.



"We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.



"Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.



"Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all."



The full document should be read at the GNU website.

So is this a good licence? One Researcher has this to say about the matter:

Ultimately the GPL seems to be one of those things people either like or hate. A lot of people don't like the GPL because derivative works have to be GPLed, but to be honest it seems to me to be the only way to ensure that Free Software stays that way. A company cannot use GPLed code in their own products without making those products GPLed as well, or contacting the copyright holders for the GPLed software and arranging some alternative licensing deal. This is seen with some systems such as the MySQL database server, which, because it has GPLed client libraries, cannot be accessed from a commercial application without purchasing a commercial MySQL licence. And this is actually a fairly sane business model.

The Lesser GPL



The Lesser GPL, formerly the Library GPL, is more controversial...

When considering the GPL it's also worth mentioning the Lesser GPL (LGPL) which is largely used for libraries which form part of development platforms, such as the GNOME desktop environment. LGPLed libraries may be linked to commercial software without any problems, but derivative works have to be under the LGPL. The rest of the terms are broadly the same as with the GPL. LGPL, while not particularly approved of by the Free Software Foundation (because it allows commercial software to exist), allows Open Source development platforms to be used as the foundation of commercial software, and that commercial software may run on operating systems where the key run-time libraries are LGPLed - such as GNU/Linux. The LGPL's not really very good for applications though, where it offers no benefits over the GPL.

One Researcher said:
If you owned photoshop, and had to link it with GPL libraries, forcing your program to have to be GPL as well, you just wouldn't do it.



By making the libraries LGPL, it is in the interest of the commercial software producers to use the LGPL lbraries, and in the process provide bug tracking and improvements, while at the same time educating them in the GPL methodology.

Proprietary Software Licences



On average they state:



  1. The Software is by definition their software you just tried to install. Then they define their, you, it and anything else what came to their mind that could be unclear. There must be a legion of lawyers working on all things they think you could interpretate wrong.

  2. You do not own the software. Despite you have payed money for the box, the handout and the carrier medium from where you can install the software. You do not own the sequence of ones and zero's known as their software.

  3. You just have a licence to use one single copy of it. And then the program does want you to use multiple instances.

  4. They entitle you to keep one backup of the software. And after one backup failed to be read you have to buy a new licence.

  5. You are not allowed to revese code it to obtain the source and to know what it does anyway. Perhaps they are afraid you see they have just copied most of it themself.

  6. You are not allowed to alter any of the code of this software. If you did would it not be their software anymore?


Open Index

Examples of Software Licences

Here is a table of certain software, what licence it is under, and what you can and cannot do with it.

SoftwareLicence
Can you...
Copy it?Modify it?Re-sell it?Redistribute it?Make it commercial?Sublicense it2?
Is it Open Source?Is it copylefted3?Is it 'Free Software'4?Is it GPL-compatible5?
MySQL6GPL
Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.No.No.
Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.
Gnome LibrariesLGPL
Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes7.No.
Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.
X11X11 Licence
Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.
Yes.No.Yes.Yes.
BSDBSD
Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.No.
Yes8.No.Yes.No.
WindowsMS EULA
No.No.No.No.No.No.
No.No.No.No.
Click here for a detailed comparison of Free Software licenses.
1This stands for 'GNU's Not Unix'.2Sublicensing is where you grant/sell these rights to a third party.3Copyleft is where derivative works must retain the same licence.4For a definition, see This entry.5Ie, can you bundle it with GPL software to make a larger program?6A database server.7Except for works based on the library, which are copylefted.8Though BSD Licensed software does not have to be.

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