I dont know the terms of the mit license by heart, so youll have to read it. The mit license allows reusing the code freely for our own use, reusing for commercial or noncommercial. It allows you to do just about anything you want with the software. Massachusetts institute of technology mit license is free license software. Some other free software foundation software is covered by. Distributing jquery licence in commercial software stack.
The mit license grants the software end user rights such as copying, modifying, merging, distributing, etc. In some cases, this type of software is originally sold and released without the source code, and the source code becomes available later. The following licenses are sorted by the number of conditions, from most gnu agplv3 to none unlicense. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and. There is no restriction to distribute the software. Linus torvalds says gpl v3 violates everything that gplv2 stood for duration. The mit license is a permissive free software license originating at the massachusetts institute of technology mit in the late 1980s. If in doubt use the more restrictive license and add a line, saying you may consider permitting uses outside of the license terms on a bycase basis. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files the software, to deal in the software without restriction, including wit. As a free software license, much of the stewardship and support for the gpl has been driven by the free software foundation. This page is maintained by the free software foundations licensing and compliance lab. Is the work based on foo hereafter referred to as bar a derivative of foo, a work that uses foo, or are you unsure in which case provide more. A common business model involves licensing the software as opensource, and offering. The tlo will discuss open source licensing strategies with the authors.
It is notable for what it does not contain, such as clauses for advertising and prohibition of the use of the owners name for. Whats great about this condition of the mit license is that other users of your code can use it for commercial purposes. Software can become incompatible with secondary licenses in one of two ways. This general public license applies to most of the free software foundations software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software to make sure the software is free for all its users. The mit license is the most popular opensource software license. It is a permissive license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software on the condition that the license is distributed with that software. The template uses variables as placeholders to substitute values specified by lice. List of proprietary sourceavailable software wikipedia. Basically, you can do whatever you want as long as you include the original and license notice. People often ask why postgresql is not released under the gnu general public license. How open source licenses work and how to add them to your projects. However, if you do want to spread your software as wide as possible, i.
The mit license, line by line171 words every programmer should understand. The jquery project uses a version of the mit license. Software and open source licensing mit technology licensing. The creative commons attributionsharealike international license version 4. Even if all of the downstream userdevelopers dont opensource their contributions, many of them will. Top 10 apache license questions answered whitesource.
Should you use a gnu gpl or mit open source license. Software licensing gpl agpl bsd mit apache eula youtube. While the project strives to adhere to the preferred license, there are. May 26, 2014 as i grew in my software experience, i came across more and more open source software. Display the mit license as part of your softwares end user license agreement eula. The disadvantage is that anyone can take software licensed under mit, change the branding, and sell it as proprietary software. If youre looking for a reference table of every license on, see the appendix. The mit license is one of the most permissive software licenses out there. I think i need to use the mit licence for jquery because the application is commercial.
In terms of exits, including both acquisition and ipo, gpl licensed projects dominate, having generated more than 6 billion in liquidity, compared to 2b. Prior to 2004, the eclipse community used the common public license cpl as the open source license for most of the open source software made available by. Generally, mit recommends either the bsd license or the gplv2 or lgplv2 licenses. Commercial computer software license dec 2007 a notwithstanding any contrary provisions contained in the contractors standard commercial license or lease agreement, the contractor agrees that the government will have the rights that are set forth in paragraph b of this clause to use, duplicate or disclose any commercial computer software. Notice that the popular licenses featured on the home page gnu gplv3 and mit fall within this spectrum. Can i use mit licence plugins in my commercial web site. A simple permissive software license used by the massachusetts institute of technology many times over. The mit license is a permissive free software license originating at the massachusetts institute of technology. Nov 08, 2015 linus torvalds says gpl v3 violates everything that gplv2 stood for duration. These files are designed to be used by lice, a commandline license generator for software projects. The mit license is short, clear, and easy to understand. Nov 18, 2015 when you release source code, put a copy of the mit license text at the top of each source file as a comment. When i looked at the mit licence in wikipedia it says.
As i grew in my software experience, i came across more and more open source software. It is essentially identical to the x11 license, with an optional alternative way of providing license notices. The mit license, which you chose to license your work under, doesnt prevent anyone downstream from changing the license, nor from changing the license of a derivative unlike a copyleft license such as the gpl. Ffmpeg is licensed under the gnu lesser general public license lgpl version 2. Mit license a short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of and license notices. Some features, such as support for some external libraries libx264 and libx265 for example and various filters, are covered by the gnu general public license gpl version 2 or later see commercial x264 license exception below. I realize that open source licenses dont forbid commercial use, i guess i was asking for an exception one can make to an os license or a notstrictlyos license or a os license that is so offputting for commercial use that in practice it wouldnt be used that way. I dont know about you, but ive definitely written a lot of software for commercial use that uses third party code.
Can you use software under mit licence for commercial use. Questions about the in a license should be directed to the license steward. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, reasonable license compatibility. As much as i love the work of the free software foundation, their focus has ultimately been anchored from the perspective that software absolutely has to be 100% free. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license compatibility it is compatible because it can be relicensed under other licenses. Frequently asked questions about version 2 of the gnu gpl. Heres the second post in our free software license faq series. You can support our efforts by making a donation to the fsf. Commercial software is any software or program that is designed and developed for licensing or sale to end users or that serves a commercial purpose. Can i use mitlicensed code in closedsource software. The original 4clause license, the revised 3clause license and the simplified 2clause license.
This is a list of proprietary sourceavailable software, which has available source code, but is not classified as free software or opensource software. Osi formed in 1998 with the goal of promoting open source software. Commercial software was once considered to be proprietary software, but now a number of free and opensource software applications are licensed or sold to end users. The android open source project aosp uses a few open source initiative approved open source licenses for our software. Mit license copyright c year fullname permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated.
Mention of lgplmit source code in a commercial software. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code. Open source licenses are licenses that comply with the open source definition in brief, they allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. Aug 15, 2015 the eclipse public license epl is an open source software license used by eclipse foundation for its software. The mit license allows you to use your code for commercial. When you release a software package, include a copy of the mit license in the root directory of the package. Once the tlo has approved release of the software via an open source license, you may then post or distribute your software under such open source license. The following licenses are in use for r or associated software such as packages. They can essentially license their fork how they like. The content on this website, of which is the author, is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, an excellent license compatibility. I took this as an indicator that open source was the way to go, so i started distributing my own work under similar licenses. Gnu project the gnu operating system and the free software.
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