Comparison of free and open-source software licenses
This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.
FOSS licenses
FOSS stands for "Free and Open Source Software". There is no one universally agreed-upon definition of FOSS software and various groups maintain approved lists of licenses. The Open Source Initiative is one such organization keeping a list of open-source licenses. The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of what it considers free. FSF's free software and OSI's open-source licenses together are called [free and open-source license|open-source software|FOSS] licenses. There are licenses accepted by the OSI which are not free as per the Free Software Definition. The Open Source Definition allows for further restrictions like price, type of contribution and origin of the contribution, e.g. the case of the NASA Open Source Agreement, which requires the code to be "original" work. The OSI does not endorse FSF license analysis as per their disclaimer.The FSF's Free Software Definition focuses on the user's unrestricted rights to use a program, to study and modify it, to copy it, and to redistribute it for any purpose, which are considered by the FSF the four essential freedoms. The OSI's open-source criteria focuses on the availability of the source code and the advantages of an unrestricted and community driven development model. Yet, many FOSS licenses, like the Apache License, and all Free Software licenses allow commercial use of FOSS components.
General comparison
For a simpler comparison across the most common licenses see free-software license comparison.The following table compares various features of each license and is a general guide to the terms and conditions of each license, based on seven subjects or categories. Recent tools like the European Commissions' Licensing Assistant, makes possible the licenses selection and comparison based on more than 40 subjects or categories, with access to their SPDX identifier and full text. The table below lists the permissions and limitations regarding the following subjects:Linking - linking of the licensed code with code licensed under a different license Distribution - distribution of the code to third partiesModification - modification of the code by a licenseePatent grant - protection of licensees from patent claims made by code contributors regarding their contribution, and protection of contributors from patent claims made by licenseesPrivate use - whether modification to the code must be shared with the community or may be used privately Sublicensing - whether modified code may be licensed under a different license or must retain the same license under which it was providedTM grant - use of trademarks associated with the licensed code or its contributors by a licensee
In this table, "permissive" means the software has minimal restrictions on how it can be used, modified, and redistributed, usually including a warranty disclaimer. "Copyleft" means the software requires that its source code be made available to each user and that all provisions in the license be preserved in derivative works.
Other licenses that don't have information:
| license | Author | Latest version | Publication date |
| Eiffel Forum License | NICE | 2 | 2002 |
| Intel Open Source License | Intel Corporation | ||
| RealNetworks Public Source License | RealNetworks | ||
| Reciprocal Public License | Scott Shattuck | 1.5 | 2007 |
| Sun Industry Standards Source License | Sun Microsystems | ||
| Sun Public License | Sun Microsystems | ||
| Sybase Open Watcom Public License | Open Watcom | 2003-01-28 | |
| Zope Public License | Zope Foundation | 2.1 | |
| Server Side Public License | MongoDB | 1.0 | 2018-10-16 |