Thinking OPEN

Comparing Open Source Licenses

By Dave McLoughlin • Oct 1st, 2008 • Category: Comparisons Open Source Licensing

The OpenLogic Certified Library includes hundreds of projects and over 225 different licenses. While many of these licenses are custom, most are based — at least loosely — on one of the 18 most commonly used license types. We’ve laid out for you in table form a detailed comparison of the common features of these licenses.

The three tables below compare the licenses on these general, and commonly considered, points, in increasing detail:

  • Author
  • Date published
  • OSI Approved
  • GPL Compatible
  • Copyleft

For those of you new to licensing, some definitions:

GPL Compatible licenses allow the combination of the code covered by them with programs that use the GPL without conflict.  Some free/open source software licenses are not GPL-compatible which means they impose conditions not in keeping with the GPL.

Copyleft licenses – of which the GPL is the most commonly used – require any work originating in the licensed code to be made available under terms identical to that specified by the license that applies to the originating code.

Comparing Licenses One to Another

Here’s a pdf of the highest level comparison…

A little more detail…

And the most detail yet…

If you’d like, you can download the entire license matrix in either Microsoft Excel (XLS) or OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) format.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Dave McLoughlin

Dave McLoughlin
Dave's kind of an all-around type of person. His life is full. This is Dave: he was drafted into OpenLogic in December 2006 and as of this moment he's handling technical sales, product manager of content for the OpenLogic Certified Library, and Managing the OpenLogic Expert Community. Yes, that last role is all caps, and we mean it. We're on pins & needles waiting to see what he'll take on next. Did we mention that he plays the trumpet (and the flugelhorn)? Very well, in fact, and regularly. With a symphony. What a guy!
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3 Responses »

  1. Matthew McCullough on January 29th, 2009 at 6:11 pm:

    Dave,

    This is an excellent effort and a very valued one in the OSS community. However, I was just ever so slightly shocked to see it published in a proprietary Microsoft XLS format. I realize this is a dominant format, but I would have hoped for a parallel publish in an open spreadsheet format. Thanks for considering a dual-publish format in the future, and thanks for the excellent work.

    With Appreciation,
    Matthew McCullough

  2. Alternatives to spending money · DragonFly BSD Digest on February 1st, 2009 at 7:07 pm:

    [...] Wazi site has some other interesting comparisons, too, on databases and licenses. Categories Goings-on «busdma(9) changes for after [...]

  3. Greg Bell on March 24th, 2009 at 1:29 pm:

    Thanks for the suggestion, Matthew. We’ve added a download option in OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) format.

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