License Introduction

1 Introduction

A software license (or software licence in commonwealth usage) is a legal instrument governing the usage or redistribution of copyright protected software. All software not in the Public domain is copyright protected. A typical software license grants an end-user permission to use one or more copies of software in ways where such a use would otherwise constitute infringement of the software publisher's exclusive rights under copyright law.

In this document the licenses used in Bonmin application are introduced. We will talk about the categories of license, the grants of specified licenses and the comparison of different licenses.

2 License Category

Usually the licenses can be divided into the following 6 categories.

• Free and Open Source
  Anyone can use, copy, and distribute, either verbatim or with modifications, either gratis or for a fee.
  • Non-copyleft
    The grants mainly includes:
    1. Create any work;
    2. No restriction on licensing;
    3. Marketplace-creating
  • Copyleft
    The grants mainly includes:
    1. Files derived from commons must use same license;
    2. Files added may use any license;
    3. Community-fostering.
  • Strong Copyleft
    The grants mainly includes:
    1. All files in project must use the same license as the commons is used in the project;
    2. Code added to the project must also use the same license as the commons
    3. Commons-protecting
• Semi-Free
  Semi-free software is software that is not free, but comes with permission for individuals to use, copy, distribute, and modify (including distribution of modified versions) for non-profit purposes.

• Proprietary
  Proprietary software is software that is not free or semi-free. Its use, redistribution or modification is prohibited, or requires you to ask for permission, or is restricted so much that you effectively can't do it freely.

3 License Description

Here we only list description of several free and open source licenses.

• X11
  A free and non-copyleft license. It is compatible with the GNU GPL; Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.

• Simple Permissive(SP)
  A free license. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining this work (the "Work"), to deal in the Work without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Work, and to permit persons to whom the Work is furnished to do so.

• BSD Revised
  A free and non-copyleft license. It is compatible with the GNU GPL; The BSD License allows proprietary commercial use; Allow unlimited redistribution for any purpose as long as its copyright notices and the license's disclaimers of warranty are maintained; The license also contains a clause restricting use of the names of contributors for endorsement of a derived work without specific permission.

• Lucent Public License(LPL)
  A free license.It is incompatible with the GNU GPL; Grants Recipient a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute and sublicense the Contribution of such Contributor , under Licensed Patents to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import and otherwise transfer the Contribution of such Contributor, if any, in source code and object code form.

• CPL
  A free and copyleft license. It is incompatible with the GNU GPL; Grants Recipient a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute and sublicense the Contribution of such Contributor , under Licensed Patents to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import and otherwise transfer the Contribution of such Contributor, if any, in source code and object code form.

• GPL version 2
  A free and strong copyleft license. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License.

• LGPL
  A free and copyleft license. Like any Free Software license, it grants to you the four following freedoms: 1 to run the program for any purpose; 2 to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs; 3to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor; 4to improve the program and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. If you modify your copy or copies of the library or any portion of it, you may distribute the resulting library provided you do so under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

• MPL1.1
  A free and copyleft license. The license is regarded as a weak copyleft. Specifically, source code copied or changed under the MPL must stay under the MPL.

• PHP 3.0
  A free and non-copyleft license. The PHP License is an open source license designed to encourage widespread adoption of the source code. Redistribution is permitted in source or binary form with or without modifications provided that: 1 The PHP License copyright statement is included; 2 The word "PHP" is not included in the title of any derivative works; 3 The following acknowledgment is included in whatever form the code is redistributed under.

• Apache License V2.0
  A free and non-copyleft license. Each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.

• Java Research License
  A non-free license. The JRL is a license that was created specifically for universities and researchers who want to use Java technologies as subject matter for learning and research. it was written to simplify and relax the terms of the existing "research" section of the current SCSL. Although the JRL claims to be an open source license in some aspects, it forbids any commercial use and is thus incompatible with both the free software definition and the open source definition. It is therefore classified as a non-free distribution license.

• Licence From Google
  Google gives you a personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to use the Service as provided by Google, in the manner permitted by the Terms.

4 License Comparison

The comparison of the above licenses according to corresponding grants is listed in table 1.

* Note: 1. Once a Contribution is contributed, it may not thereafter be revoked. 2. Contributors may not remove or alter any copyright notices contained within the Program. 3. Do not mix Code Covered by this license with incompatible licenses. 4. only if that license agreement provides for availability of attendant source code. 5. Not used in advertising.

5 License Glossary

We will summarize some definitions about license rights in table 2.

References

1. Gwyn Firth Murray, Michael A. Duncheon, Free and Open Source Software:An Introduction

2. Till Jaeger,Towards an OSS License for Europe?
3. Adam Sampson,Practical Open Source Licensing
4. Zack Rusin, Open Source Licenses Comparison
5. WikipeDia,Comparison of free software licenses