Free software license

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A free software licence is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software.

These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights.

Software using such a licence is free software as conferred by the copyright holder.

Copyleft

Some free software licenses include "copyleft" provisions which require all future versions to also be distributed with these freedoms. Other, "permissive", free software licenses are usually just a few lines containing the grant of rights and a disclaimer of warranty, thus also allowing distributors to add restrictions for further recipients.

GNU

The most widely used free software license is the GNU General Public License.

External links

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