Permissive free software license
A permissive free software licence is a class of free software license with minimal requirements about how the software can be redistributed.
Contents
Description
Such licenses make no guarantee that future generations of the software will remain free.
This is in contrast to licences which have reciprocity / share-alike requirements.
Both sets of free software licences offer the same freedoms in terms of how the software can be used, studied, and privately modified.
A major difference is that when the software is being redistributed (either modified or unmodified), permissive licences permit the redistributor to restrict access to the modified source code, while copyleft licenses do not allow this restriction.
About the term permissive
The term "permissive" as applied to software licensing is sometimes debatable in terms of specific terms and requirements, with occasional references to very weak copyleft being described as "permissive".
Copyfree
A more narrowly constrained term related to permissive licensing is copyfree, which implies distinct licence term requirements analogous to, but different from, those of free software.
Examples
Well-known examples of permissive free software licences include the MIT License and the BSD licenses.
A well known copyleft licence is the GNU General Public License.
See also
- BSD licenses
- Free software
- Free software license
- GNU General Public License
- MIT License
- Software license
External links
- Permissive free software licenses @ Wikipedia
