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The problem with this page, although well-intentioned, is that a global opinion about license compatibility is just that: global, and an opinion. Whether one license is compatible with another really isn't your, mine, or his decision to make. It is a decision that only a licensor can make. I may think that the BSD license is compatible with the GPL. If I do, then it doesn't matter if somebody else says it isn't, because I'm not going to initiate a lawsuit. Whatever the licensor says, goes, even if everybody else disagrees with him. RussNelson 01:12, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
00 tux 22:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, 00tux, but you cannot wiggle out of this philosophical problem simply by claiming that you are focussing on the legal aspect only. It's not enough to say whether a license is compatible or not. You have to say who says it, and who will listen to them. So, when the FSF says that the Apache 2.1 is not GPL compatible, and yet the ASF says that it is, who is right? You can't say who is right -- not if you want a NPOV. You have to say who says it, and who will listen to them. RussNelson 02:47, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
For me it`s interesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.183.187.69 (talk) 17:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Great points. But in the end, in the US and most countries, it's the courts who decide what each license means. Anything that is vague enough to be argued about, won't be clear until the wording is changed or it is challenged in court. I like Snarius' 'contested' idea, or at least adding *lots* of footnotes. --GlenPeterson (talk) 12:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm not really sure what to do with the gigantic table; it's not readable as it is, and there appears to be only one entry filled in... Cheyinka 10:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I added two columns on "license features" which treads dangerous close to NPOV. (Specifically, the default "yes/no" templates seem to suggest "yes" is good and "no" is bad, implying a value judgement.) In this case, I made "yes" be the least restrictive option, which is arguably a value judgement. Oh well. There's a reference to the chart this is based off (no original research) but I haven't really figured out a good way to link it. So right now it's a footnoot in the standard <ref> style. I don't really like that, but - oh well.
The table columns are a little wider than I'd like, since I tried to make the column titles as descriptive as possible. It may be better to choose simple titles for them and then add footnotes describing what is intended. — Xenoveritas 22:09, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
License features are interesting. I guess not all licenses are resistant to any law tricks, like foul tricks with patents? A feature is for me for example resistant against foul patent tricks, or compatible with GPL, or copyleft, or license change allowed, many more... What about a new table for this?
Microsoft has some shared source licenses now. Two or so got also approved. Shouldn we add those licenses to this overview? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.183.187.69 (talk) 17:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
The LGPL has a "Yes" in the "Link from code with a different license" column. While strictly true, it requires that you allow your code to be disassembled and reverse-engineered. I think this deserves at least a footnote... --GlenPeterson (talk) 12:53, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to relicense LGPL code as GPL code? It was possible with LGPL v2.1, wasn't it? Originalfmg (talk) 23:20, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to see the details from this table [1] included in a "features" table on this article. I believe something like this would be very useful. --Hm2k (talk) 00:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Doesn't CDDL have a copyleft similar to MPL? Shouldn't "Release changes under a different license" be "No" and red? I'm not 100% sure about this, thus I didn't want to change it before asking. (Puce77 (talk) 12:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC))
Ni Faiwaiza (talk) 05:10, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
Could someone comment on Common Public Attribution License? I'm no software licensing expert or lawyer so if anyone knows how to classify CPAL, it would be greatly appreciated! (Note, it claims it is a free software license, but I don't see it on here... unless it is the same thing as "Common Public License"? I don't think so though as CPAL seems more conditional... here's an example of a CPAL for a popular ESB software with a "community" open source version released under CPAL, and an "Enterprise" commercial version: http://www.mulesoft.org/licensing-mule-esb —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bcmoney (talk • contribs) 20:24, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
I think List of FSF-approved software licenses should be merged here. In addition, we should merge in the free software section of List of software licenses; there is no reason to maintain this information in 3 places. --KarlB (talk) 18:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Agreed - maintain in one place only. However "commercial royalty-free" isn't necessarily the same as open source as the source may not be available. Leornian (talk) 22:58, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
The tables and discussions only include the latest version of a given license - for instance GPLv3. But developers can (and do) use older versions. The GPL is a good example of this - many projects (e.g. Linux) continue to use the older version GPLv2 because they do not like the provisions of the newer one.
I suggest that the article be modified to include older versions that are still in wide use - at a minimum GPLv2.
DEJ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.29.43.3 (talk) 17:36, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Should we synchronize the list of licenses in the article with the SPDX License List? --Matthew Raymond (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I plan to remove the Copyfree column as not notable. Nothing is wrong with starting your own server and offering some free service, quite the contrary, it's brilliant. But an article with no external reference at all, and "legal experts" offering their opinion not recognized anywhere outside of this Wikipedia comparison, IANAL, this can't be a good idea, or can it? –Be..anyone (talk) 09:10, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
The section Article comparison begins with a hidden inline comment This matrix/chart needs an introduction to explain clearly what each of the column entries means. In fact the complete table is bogus, I've removed three columns with no info at all (= all cells filled with yes). The rest of the table (12×11 cells) is still bogus, mostly saying that the five GNU licenses differ from the six other licenses in four columns, some unsourced details about trademarks, and 26 empty dunno cells. The best way to fix these issues could be to remove the section, or to transform the table in some referenced statements highlighting the differences. –Be..anyone (talk) 02:04, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
The row on the Eclipse Public License described linking, distribution and modification as "Limited", with footnote 7 pointing to the "eclipse public license version 1" without an explanation. What does "Limited" really limit? Daviding (talk) 15:47, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
Lots of licenses say noting about trademarks, e.g. BSD and MIT. [Or anything about patents, "Patent grant" would be "No", except no free or open-scource license would explicitly NOT grant patents so I go with "Manually".] Should the column be "Grants TM"? And is this unrelated to:
XCore Open Source License: "Neither the name of XMOS, nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Software or the Documentation without specific prior written permission of the copyright holder."
And it's Hardware License Agreement:
"Neither the names of XMOS, nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Open Design or the Documentation without specific prior written permission of the copyright holder." comp.arch (talk) 18:51, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
Seems MPL does not grant trademarks (similar to Apache). See sections: 2.1, 2.3 "This License does not grant any rights in the trademarks, service marks, or logos of any Contributor (except as may be necessary to comply with the notice requirements in Section 3.4)." and 3.4 comp.arch (talk) 19:04, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
The Approvals table says that OSI approved the "Apple Public Source License 1.x", but I can’t find it on OSI’s site (they seem to have only approved the version 2 of this license). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.162.34.74 (talk) 16:52, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
...since the whole point of copyleft is to remove all restrictions... can we change copyleft to blue in the table? I think that would differentiate it nicely from both the non-reciprocal permissive and the restrictive licenses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr (talk • contribs) 03:15, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Cyan would be better I think after thinking about it a little. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr (talk • contribs) 03:20, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
To be more neutral, it is better to use "Free/Libre Open Source Software". See Stallman's reasoning here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.html It is a reasonable change I think. Free is not gratis, or free as in free beer but as in freedom ;-) Filiprino (talk) 11:44, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
I'm planning to fill in missing blanks in the table, but I would like to propose some clarifications:
"?" should be used for incomplete fields (meaning they haven't been researched by a human yet)
"unknown" should be used for unknown values (for example, if the creator of the license is not attributed in any known source, it is unknown, but still complete and researched)
"disputed" should be used when a field's value is disputed. Disputed fields should always include sources.
Some additional proposed changes: Modification column should be more specific rather than yes/no, since many licenses allow modification, but only if modifications are labelled/documented.
In addition to filling in "?", I will add some licenses that are not included (for example, some Microsoft licenses) and breakdown some licenses further (for example, BSD license is commonly separated into 2-Clause, 3-Clause, and 2-Clause-Patent). I will also add clarifying notes when helpful. Unknowngnome (talk) 03:44, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
the Lesser Perceptive Licence implies proprietary way to the available result, indicating that all knowledge about the software is perceptible and accessible to the use of other tools to achieve the presented result;
perhaps thus indicating the tools used, "the work was evidenced by the developer in order to complete the available project"; reserving the perception in the interests of the end user in perpetuating actions to infer the productivity triggering efforts in losses for social participation;
The title under reverse engineering implies the deduction in which the work was already personified by the developer, again indicating the tools of third parties used for production is a result of the intellectual project already personified through the available work;
By reserving the perception of continuity of the project absent from interruptions, focusing on the embellishment, improvement in updates and continuity by the author of the work presented - indicating the fame being reserved in access to other tools to satisfy curiosities of the end user to his own learning for production ; — Preceding unsigned comment added by WDS Account (talk • contribs) 08:33, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
While a helpful summary, the values used in the table are confusing and easy to misinterpret. For instance, under Private use we have "Yes" and "Permissive" -- do they both mean the same thing? While the first use of "Permissive" and "Copylefted" in the table are linked to their respective articles, this is easy to miss and still leaves other values poorly defined. Perhaps a brief "legend" for the table would be helpful, defining what each value means.
Also, the "Private use" column may be a bit misleading since, for example, GPL code can be modified and compiled for private use, but must be distributed once the compiled form is released to any other party. Perhaps the combination of "Distribution" and "Private use" adequately delineates this, but this does not seem immediately clear. Regards, Daniel Santos (talk) 06:59, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
I have a few questions about the Python Software Foundation License. Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, just trying to bumble through...
-- Netsettler (talk) 19:25, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Is there any reason why this article uses the British spelling "licence" in the title? As of now, the spelling "licence" occurs 42 times in the article and "license" occurs 300 times. Wikipedia does not promote U.S. spelling over U.K. spelling, but it does ask for consistency within an article: WP:COFAQ#ENGLISH. Would anyone have an objection to moving this article to "Comparison of free and open-source software licenses" and changing the 42 variants to be consistent with the 300? Other license-related articles use "license", as seen in Free software license and Open-source license. Iritscen (talk) 16:02, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_open_licences#Merge_propsal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Avoinlähde (talk • contribs) 22:55, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
![]() | The request to rename this article to Comparison of free and open-source software licenses has been carried out.
If the page title has consensus, be sure to close this discussion using ((subst:RM top|'''page moved'''.)) and ((subst:RM bottom)) and remove the ((Requested move/dated|…)) tag, or replace it with the ((subst:Requested move/end|…)) tag. |
Comparison of free and open-source software licences → Comparison of free and open-source software licenses – For the relevant policy, see WP:CONSISTENT where it says, "Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles". The only other articles in this page's category, Category:Free and open-source software licenses, which use the spelling "licence" are three pages named for specific "Licence"s created in the U.K., whereas the generic lower-case word has been spelled consistently as "license" in all article titles. Thus it seems strange that the article which compares these licenses would use a different spelling. For additional context, the category's parent category Category:Software licenses has no articles at all which use the spelling "licence" in their names. Iritscen (talk) 21:55, 28 March 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 23:00, 5 April 2022 (UTC)