Open source licences

by Elena Blanco on 24 April 2008 , last updated 9 September 2012

Introduction

For OSS Watch open source software is software that has been released under an Open Source Initiative (OSI) certified licence. Each of the licences approved by the OSI meets the conditions of the Open Source Definition but very different styles of licence meet these criteria. The most popular OSI-approved licences are described here both for general information and to help you to decide which licence best suits your situation.

• The Apache License v2 - An Overview
• Common Public Attribution License - An Overview
• European Union Public Licence - An Overview
• The Eclipse Public License - An Overview
• The GNU General Public License v3 - An Overview
• GPL v3 - What’s New?
• GNU Affero General Public License v3 - An Overview
• The GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 - An Overview
• The GNU General Public License v2 - An Overview
• The Mozilla Public Licence version 2 - An Overview
• The Mozilla Public License v 1.1 - An Overview
• The Modified BSD License - An Overview