Open source license

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Open source license

(legal)

Any document that attempts to specify open source usage and distribution of software. These licenses are usually drafted by experts and are likely to be more legally sound than one a programmer could write. However, loopholes do exist.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of open source licenses:

1. Public Domain - No license.

2. BSD License - An early open source license

3. General Public License (GPL) - The copyleft license of the Free Software Foundation. Used for GNU software and much of Linux.

4. Artistic License Less restrictive than the GPL, permitted by Perl in addition to the GPL.

5. Mozilla Public Licenses. (MPL, MozPL) and Netscape Public License (NPL).

["Open Sources", pub. O'Reilly, full text].

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

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When software is open source, its source code, documentation and other content are publicly accessible by an acquirement of an open-source license, or it is publicly accessible on an open-source basis.

Defining open source systems

Accordingly, an open-source license must guarantee that source be readily available, but may require that it be distributed as pristine base sources plus patches.