By Ifeoluwa Favour

Open Source Licensing

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Ifeoluwa Favour
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2 min read

In my opinion, the open-source community is one of the best things to happen to the tech industry. Contributors get to be a part of something big and feel fulfilled. Users of open-source software can tweak the software based on their needs. However, the freedom that comes with using open-source software or source code has some restrictions.

I didn't know about the importance of open-source licences until recently when my mentor for the Outreachy internship program asked me to research it.

What is an Open Source Licence

An open-source licence is a document that guides users on how to properly use, distribute, copy or modify an open-source software.

Open-source software is free (not referring to price) but different authors of open-source software have their visions for their work.

Types of open-source licences

Permissive licences give users fewer restrictions when using source code. Users can modify and distribute the licensed software with few conditions to follow. Some popular examples include MIT, Apache, BSD etc.

The MIT licence, for example, lets users use, copy, modify, and distribute its licensed software as they please on the condition that all copies maintain the MIT licence and copyright notice. It is also compatible with other licences.

Copyleft licence is more restrictive than a permissive licence. Generally, they require that any derivative work of the licensed software be released under the same licence as the original. This licence is further divided into strong copyleft licences like AGPL, GPL, LGPL etc. and weak copyleft licences like Mozilla etc.

The GPL version 3 licence lets users modify and distribute software with its licence as long as its licence is maintained. It is not compatible with other licences and software with its licence is not to be privatised or made proprietary.

Resources

To learn more about open-source licences, you can check out these web pages:

Open SourceoutreachyLicense