Licenses

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

• current version: 2.0
• author: Free Creations
• reference URL (English): http://www.freecreations.org/Against_DRM2.html
• reference URL (Italian): http://www.freecreations.org/Against_DRM2_it.html
• reference URL (Spanish - Castilian): http://www.freecreations.org/Against_DRM2_es1.html
• reference URL (Spanish - Catalan): http://www.freecreations.org/Against_DRM2_es2.html
• reference URL (French): http://www.freecreations.org/Against_DRM2_fr.html

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 anymore
• License text (English)

Do What The F* You Want To Public License

• Aliases: WTFPL
• Current version: 2 (December 2004)
• License Text (English)

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

FreeBSD Documentation License

• author: FreeBSD Project
• reference URL: http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-doc-license.html

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

• Aliases: License Arte Libre, FAL, LAL
• Current version: 1.3
• author: Copyleft Attitude
• License text (English, version 1.2)
• License text (French)

GNU Free Documentation License

• Aliases: GNU FDL, GFDL, FDL
• Current version: 1.2
• License text (English)

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

• Aliases: GNU GPL, GPL
• Current version: 3.0
• Author: Free Software Foundation
• License text (English)

The GNU GPL is, according to various statistics, probably the most used free software license. It was also the first license to implement the concept of copyleft, guaranteeing that "GPL'ed" free software cannot become, or take part in, non-free software.

Although the GPL is primarily intended for software programs, it is worded so as to apply to many different kinds of works. The main condition for the GPL to be applicable to a type of work is that it admits the notion of a preferred form of a work for making modifications to it (be it source code in a computer language, music score notation, digital graphics under a format retaining structure, etc.). For example, there are many occurences of text or graphics released under the GPL.

Lizenz für Freie Inhalte

• Aliases: LFFI
• License Text (German)

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

MIT License

• author: MIT
• reference URL: http://www.opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/mit-license.php

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

• Essay about the Creative Commons non-commercial restriction