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rce Licenses by Category
Open Source Licenses by Category
Page created on September 19, 2006 | Last modified on November 2, 2022
License Index
●License Approval Process
●License Information
●Origins and definitions of categories from the License Proliferation Committee report
In the lists below, a parenthesized expression following a license name is its SPDX short identifier, if one exists, except for two items in the first list (GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License). For these, the parenthesized expressions (“GPL” and “LGPL” respectively) are the common non-version-specific names of these licenses today (note also that the full name of the first version (2.0) of the LGPL is the GNU Library General Public License). There is no non-version-specific SPDX short identifier for the GPL and LGPL.
Licenses that are “popular and widely-used or with strong communities”
The below list is based on publicly available statistics obtained at the time of the Report of License Proliferation Committee.
●Apache License 2.0 (Apache-2.0)
●3-clause BSD license (BSD-3-Clause)
●2-clause BSD license (BSD-2-Clause)
●GNU General Public License (GPL)
●GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
●MIT license (MIT)
●Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0)
●Common Development and Distribution License 1.0 (CDDL-1.0)
●Eclipse Public License 2.0 (EPL-2.0)
International licenses
●CeCILL License 2.1
●European Union Public License (EUPL-1.2)
●Licence Libre du Québec – Permissive (LiLiQ-P) version 1.1 (LiLiQ-P-1.1)
●Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité (LiLiQ-R) version 1.1 (LiLiQ-R-1.1)
●Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité forte (LiLiQ-R+) version 1.1 (LiLiQ-Rplus-1.1)
●Mulan Permissive Software License v2 (MulanPSL – 2.0)
Special purpose licenses
Certain licensors, such as schools and the US government, have specialized concerns, such as specialized rules for government copyrights. Licenses that were identified by the License Proliferation Committee as meeting a special need were placed in this group.
BSD+Patent (BSD-2-Clause-Patent)
CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 – Permissive
CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 – Weakly Reciprocal
CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 – Strongly Reciprocal
Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (ECL-2.0)
●IPA Font License (IPA)
●Lawrence Berkeley National Labs BSD Variant License (BSD-3-Clause-LBNL)
●NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3 (NASA-1.3)
●OSET Public License version 2.1 (OSET-PL-2.1)
●SIL Open Font License 1.1 (OFL-1.1)
●Unicode License Agreement – Data Files and Software
●The Unlicense (Unlicense)
●Upstream Compatibility License v1.0 (UCL-1.0)
Other/Miscellaneous licenses
These licenses do not fall neatly into any category.
●0-clause BSD License (0BSD)
●1-clause BSD License (BSD-1-Clause)
●Adaptive Public License (APL-1.0)
●Artistic license 2.0 (Artistic-2.0)
●Free Public License 1.0.0 (0BSD)
●JAM License (Jam)
●MIT No Attribution License (MIT-0)
●Open Software License (OSL-3.0)
●Q Public License (QPL-1.0)
●Universal Permissive License (UPL)
●Zero-Clause BSD (0BSD)
●zlib/libpng license (Zlib)
Licenses that are redundant with more popular licenses
Several licenses in this group are excellent licenses and have their own followings, however these licenses were perceived by the License Proliferation Committee as completely or partially redundant with existing licenses.
●Academic Free License 3,0 (AFL-3.0)
●Attribution Assurance License (AAL)
●Eiffel Forum License V2.0 (EFL-2.0)
●Fair License (Fair)
●Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer (HPND)
●Lucent Public License Version 1.02 (LPL-1.02)
●OpenLDAP Public License Version 2.8 (OLDAP-2.8)
●The PostgreSQL License (PostgreSQL)
●University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License (NCSA)
●X.Net License (Xnet)
●Zope Public License 2.1
Non-reusable licenses
Licenses in this group are specific to their authors and cannot be reused by others. Many, but not all, of these licenses fall into the category of vanity licenses.
●Apple Public Source License (APSL-2.0)
●Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License 1.1 (CATOSL-1.1)
●eCos License version 2.0
●EU DataGrid Software License (EUDatagrid)
●Entessa Public License (Entessa)
●Frameworx License (Frameworx-1.0)
●IBM Public License 1.0 (IPL-1.0)
●LaTeX Project Public License 1.3c (LPPL-1.3c)
●Motosoto License (Motosoto)
●Multics License (Multics)
●Naumen Public License (Naumen)
●Nethack General Public License (NGPL)
●Nokia Open Source License (Nokia)
●OCLC Research Public License 2.0 (OCLC-2.0)
●Python License (Python-2.0)
●CNRI Python license (CNRI-Python) (CNRI portion of Python License)
●RealNetworks Public Source License V1.0 (RPSL-1.0)
●Ricoh Source Code Public License (RSCPL)
●Sleepycat License (Sleepycat)
●Sun Public License 1.0 (SPL-1.0)
●Sybase Open Watcom Public License 1.0 (Watcom-1.0)
●Vovida Software License v. 1.0 (VSL-1.0)
●W3C License (W3C)
●wxWindows Library License (WXwindows)
Superseded licenses
Licenses in this category have been superseded by newer versions.
●Apache Software License 1.1 (Apache-1.1)
●Artistic license 1.0 (Artistic-1.0)
●Common Public License 1.0 (CPL-1.0)
●Eclipse Public License 1.0 (EPL-1.0)
●Educational Community License, Version 1.0 (ECL-1.0)
●Eiffel Forum License V1.0 (EFL-1.0)
●EUPL V1.1 (EUPL-1.1)
●Lucent Public License (“Plan9”), version 1.0 (LPL-1.0)
●Mozilla Public License 1.0 (MPL-1.0)
●Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL-1.1)
●Open Software License 1.0 (OSL-1.0)
●Open Software License 2.1 (OSL-2.1)
●PHP License 3.0 (PHP-3.0)
●Reciprocal Public License, version 1.1 (RPL-1.1)
●Zope Public License 2.0 (ZPL-2.0)
Licenses that have been voluntarily retired
Self-defining category. No one should use these licenses going forward, although we assume that licensors may or may not choose to continue to use them.
●CUA Office Public License Version 1.0 (CUA-OPL-1.0)
●Intel Open Source License (Intel)
●Jabber Open Source License
●MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW)
●Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
Uncategorized Licenses
●Boost Software License (BSL-1.0)
●Cryptographic Autonomy License v.1.0 (CAL-1.0)
●Common Public Attribution License 1.0 (CPAL-1.0)
●GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPL-3.0)
●ISC License (ISC)
●Microsoft Public License (MS-PL)
●Microsoft Reciprocal License (MS-RL)
●MirOS Licence (MirOS)
●Non-Profit Open Software License 3.0 (NPOSL-3.0)
●NTP License (NTP)
●Open Group Test Suite License (OGTSL)
●Reciprocal Public License 1.5 (RPL-1.5)
●Simple Public License 2.0 (SimPL-2.0)
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