Version 1.1 of the definition has been released. Please help updating it, contribute translations, and help us with the design of logos and buttons to identify free cultural works and licenses!

Licenses: Difference between revisions

From Definition of Free Cultural Works
Jump to navigation Jump to search
m (Reverted edits by 121.186.218.65 (Talk); changed back to last version by Angela Beesley)
Line 161: Line 161:
=== Design Science License ===
=== Design Science License ===


 
* ''Not maintained anymore''<ref></ref>
* [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html License text (English)]
* [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html License text (English)]
바보


=== Do What The F* You Want To Public License ===
=== Do What The F* You Want To Public License ===

Revision as of 01:36, 9 May 2008

Comparison of Licenses

License Intended scope Copyleft Practical modifiability Attribution Related rights Access control prohibition Worldwide applicability
Against DRM Works of art Normal No No Granted Yes Exact translations
Creative Commons Attribution Non-software No No Yes Granted Yes National adaptations
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike Non-software Normal No Yes Granted Yes National adaptations
Design Science License Generic, optimally science data Normal Yes No No No Same license (English version)
Do What The F* You Want To Public License Generic No No No Granted No Same license (English version)
Free Art License Non-software Normal No Yes Granted No Exact translations (French law)
FreeBSD Documentation License Documentation No No No No No Same license (English version)
GNU Free Documentation License Documentation Normal Yes Yes - Yes Same license (English version)
GNU Lesser General Public License Generic, optimally Software Weak Yes No - No Same license (English version)
GNU General Public License Generic, optimally Software Strong Yes No - Version 3 prohibits "Tivoisation" in certain cases Same license (English version)
Lizenz für Freie Inhalte Generic Normal No Yes No No Unknown (license text is German)
MIT License Software No No No No No Same license (English version)


List of licenses

Against DRM

BSD-like non-copyleft licenses

In parallel with the set of GNU licenses (including the GNU GPL), the free software world evolved a number of very simple non-copyleft licenses. These licenses are so simple that no dedicated text is needed to expose the terms of the license. To reuse such a license, you must take its text and replace the copyright notice with your own. Since these licenses are non-copyleft, changing the license text in such a way does not prevent reuse between works from happening.

Regardless of their wording, these licenses always grant the user very broad rights, including the right to modify and distribute without supplying any source code. Also, their concise wording makes them simple to understand and unambiguous as to their effects.

These licenses are often called "BSD-like" because the first occurence of such a license has been the license under which the Berkeley Software Distribution (one of the first free versions of Unix) was shipped to users.

One should distinguish the original BSD license with its controversial advertising clause from the revised BSD license that does not have the advertising clause.

Creative Commons Attribution

  • Aliases: CC-BY
  • Current version: 3.0

Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike

  • Aliases: CC-BY-SA
  • Current version: 3.0

Design Science License

  • Not maintained anymoreCite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content
  • License text (English)

Do What The F* You Want To Public License

This is a minimalistic, all-permissive, all-purpose license.

FreeBSD Documentation License

Although especially written for the FreeBSD project, this license shows you how to draft a very simple non-copyleft license for documentation works.

Free Art License

GNU Free Documentation License

Invariant sections

Invariant sections are a special provision of the GFDL which, if used, prevent anyone from modifying the parts of the work which are defined as "invariant". The Free Software Foundation finds it useful to protect some special "non-functional" parts of the work, like a statement of intent (the motivation for invariant sections was, allegedly, to prevent the GNU Manifesto to be removed or modified in GNU documentations).

We believe, however, that freedom should apply to all kind of works, and that what is "functional" in one situation can be "artistic" in another - and vice-versa. Consequently, a work using invariant sections to forbid some kinds of modifications to the work cannot be considered completely free.

Unless additional permissions are granted, all FDL works contain unmodifiable sections which aren't called Invariant Sections, such as a copy of the license embedded in the document itself.

GNU General Public License

The GNU GPL is, according to various statistics, probably the most used free software license. It was also the

Lizenz für Freie Inhalte

AFAIK only used by the german portal neppstar for free music and video. Anyway, it seems to be a valid free license.

MIT License

This license is arguably the simplest form of the BSD-like licenses for software. All the license, except for the no-warranty statement, is condensed in two short paragraphs.

There are variants, like the current BSD license which has an additional provision forbidding endorsement of derived works using the name of the original authors.

Commentary on non-free licenses