Firstly a general disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Nor are the vast majority who read or add to this resource. Don’t expect everything here to be right. There are almost certainly many inaccuracies. Double check the facts.
Now some grammar:
You have a software licence. It’s a noun.
You discuss software licensing. That’s the verb.
You almost certainly used licenced software. That’s the adjective.
And don’t accept pretenders to this usage.
Licences vary in many ways, and this Wiki is intended as a resource for comparison so you’ll find a page for each software licence. If you find one missing and you know about it, please fill in some detail. You can trace the family history of some licences, so you’ll see that sometimes they are grouped together - please add to the family history.
Often there will be a FAQ about a licence as part of the licence page. Please add your questions and your answers.
You can find an excellent list of the licence at OSI Or http://opensource.enomaly.com/open_source_licenses__GPL__BSD__GN.licenses+M54a708de802.0.html
Freedoms - a comparison of the freedoms you enjoy under various licences
Restrictions - the converse of freedoms
Public domain
BSD
W3C
LGPL
GPL
MPL
Commercial
Boost - http://www.boost.org/more/license_info.html
I wonder if we could map these into quadrants or similar based on their freedoms. For instance GPL would have open source but not the ability to combine freely with other code under any licence. Could make for interesting graphs.
BSD Family
Copyleft family
Commercial
What about licences that cross the boundaries? For e.g. ane that permits GPL usage but shares income.
The elements of many licences are similar, but vary in fine detail. For instance, there’s usually a clause limiting the exposure of the provider. It often takes a form like this:
“THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.”
Why the CAPS? Allegedly because under US Consumer law it’s required. I haven’t found a reference for this.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/30/esr_interview.html - discussion of BSD and GPL
http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2005/opensource/070405-face-off-yes.html
http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2005/opensource/070405-face-off-no.html
http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/08/0447259&tid=117&tid=7 - read this with comment level set at 4 or 5