83-630: CeCILL (from CEA CNRS INRIA Logiciel Libre ) is a free software license adapted to both international and French legal matters, in the spirit of and retaining compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was jointly developed by a number of French agencies: the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique (Atomic Energy Commission), the Centre National de la recherche scientifique (National Centre for Scientific Research) and
166-606: A copyleft license and another license is often only a one-way compatibility. This "one-way compatibility" characteristic is, for instanced, criticized by the Apache Foundation , who provides the more permissive Apache license which doesn't have this characteristic. Non-copyleft licenses, such as the FOSS permissive licenses , have a less complicated license interaction and normally exhibit better license compatibility. For example, if one license says "modified versions must mention
249-551: A dual-license setup, along with the GNU General Public License . The vast majority of free software uses undisputed free-software licenses; however, there have been many debates over whether or not certain other licenses qualify for the definition. Examples of licenses that provoked debate were the 1.x series of the Apple Public Source License , which were accepted by the Open Source Initiative but not by
332-527: A provider and accessed over the Internet . The process of developing software involves several stages. The stages include software design , programming , testing , release , and maintenance . Software quality assurance and security are critical aspects of software development, as bugs and security vulnerabilities can lead to system failures and security breaches. Additionally, legal issues such as software licenses and intellectual property rights play
415-509: A vulnerability . Software patches are often released to fix identified vulnerabilities, but those that remain unknown ( zero days ) as well as those that have not been patched are still liable for exploitation. Vulnerabilities vary in their ability to be exploited by malicious actors, and the actual risk is dependent on the nature of the vulnerability as well as the value of the surrounding system. Although some vulnerabilities can only be used for denial of service attacks that compromise
498-520: A web application —had become the primary method that companies deliver applications. Software companies aim to deliver a high-quality product on time and under budget. A challenge is that software development effort estimation is often inaccurate. Software development begins by conceiving the project, evaluating its feasibility, analyzing the business requirements, and making a software design . Most software projects speed up their development by reusing or incorporating existing software, either in
581-851: A CeCILL v1 license with CeCILL v2, so all software previously licensed with CeCILL v1 in 2004 can be licensed with CeCILL v2, with legal terms enforceable as authentic not only in French but in English too. The fact that it is protected by reputed public research centers (in France the INRIA, a founding member of the international W3 consortium, and the CEA working on atomic energy) which use them to publish their own open-source and free software, and by critical governmental organizations (which are also working in domains like military and defense systems) also gives much more security than using
664-446: A French court does not limit users, who can still choose a jurisdiction of their choice by mutual agreement to solve any litigation they may experience. The explicit reference to a French court will be used only if mutual agreement is not possible; this immediately solves the problem of competence of laws (something that the GPL does not solve cleanly, except when all parties in litigation are in
747-457: A change request. Frequently, software is released in an incomplete state when the development team runs out of time or funding. Despite testing and quality assurance , virtually all software contains bugs where the system does not work as intended. Post-release software maintenance is necessary to remediate these bugs when they are found and keep the software working as the environment changes over time. New features are often added after
830-486: A code's correct and efficient behavior, its reusability and portability , or the ease of modification. It is usually more cost-effective to build quality into the product from the beginning rather than try to add it later in the development process. Higher quality code will reduce lifetime cost to both suppliers and customers as it is more reliable and easier to maintain . Software failures in safety-critical systems can be very serious including death. By some estimates,
913-401: A commercial status. Without these licenses, such systems could not have been built and used, and protected legally against various international patent claims. Due to the huge cost of these French strategic systems, a very strong licensing scheme was absolutely necessary to help protecting these investments against illegitimate claims by other commercial third parties, and one of the first needs
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#1732844664622996-525: A different position on licensing. The main difference is the belief that the copyleft licenses, particularly the GNU General Public License (GPL), are undesirably complicated and/or restrictive. The GPL requires any derivative work to also be released according to the GPL while the BSD license does not. Essentially, the BSD license's only requirement is to acknowledge the original authors, and poses no restrictions on how
1079-443: A legal regime where liability for software products is significantly curtailed compared to other products. Source code is protected by copyright law that vests the owner with the exclusive right to copy the code. The underlying ideas or algorithms are not protected by copyright law, but are often treated as a trade secret and concealed by such methods as non-disclosure agreements . Software copyright has been recognized since
1162-502: A license software could not truly be waived into public domain and can't be interpreted as very permissive FOSS license, a position which faced opposition by Daniel J. Bernstein and others. In 2012 the dispute was finally resolved when Rosen accepted the CC0 as open source license , while admitting that contrary to his previous claims copyright can be waived away, backed by Ninth circuit decisions. In 2007, after years of draft discussion,
1245-485: A memorandum of understanding". The disclaimers of warranty and liability are written in a manner different from other common open-source licenses to comply with French law. The CeCILL does not preclude the licensor from offering a warranty or technical support for its software, but requires that such services be negotiated in a separate agreement. The license is compatible with the GPL through an explicit relicensing clause. Article 13's explicit reference to French law and
1328-588: A problem which had not previously existed. This new threat was one of the reasons for writing version 3 of the GNU GPL in 2006. In recent years, a term coined tivoization describes a process where hardware restrictions are used to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware, in which the TiVo device is an example. It is viewed by the FSF as a way to turn free software to effectively non-free, and
1411-495: A significant role in the distribution of software products. The first use of the word software is credited to mathematician John Wilder Tukey in 1958. The first programmable computers, which appeared at the end of the 1940s, were programmed in machine language . Machine language is difficult to debug and not portable across different computers. Initially, hardware resources were more expensive than human resources . As programs became complex, programmer productivity became
1494-509: A specific version of the software, downloaded, and run on hardware belonging to the purchaser. The rise of the Internet and cloud computing enabled a new model, software as a service (SaaS), in which the provider hosts the software (usually built on top of rented infrastructure or platforms ) and provides the use of the software to customers, often in exchange for a subscription fee . By 2023, SaaS products—which are usually delivered via
1577-415: A system's availability, others allow the attacker to inject and run their own code (called malware ), without the user being aware of it. To thwart cyberattacks, all software in the system must be designed to withstand and recover from external attack. Despite efforts to ensure security, a significant fraction of computers are infected with malware. Programming languages are the format in which software
1660-783: A user's rights if said user embarks on litigation proceedings against them due to patent litigation. Patent retaliation emerged in response to proliferation and abuse of software patents . The majority of free-software licenses require that modified software not claim to be unmodified. Some licenses also require that copyright holders be credited. One such example is version 2 of the GNU GPL, which requires that interactive programs that print warranty or license information, may not have these notices removed from modified versions intended for distribution. Licenses of software packages containing contradictory requirements render it impossible to combine source code from such packages in order to create new software packages. License compatibility between
1743-402: Is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th century. Early programs were written in the machine language specific to the hardware. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 allowed for more human-readable instructions, making software development easier and more portable across different computer architectures . Software in a programming language
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#17328446646221826-410: Is generally believed that such agendas should not be served through software licenses; among other things because of practical aspects such as resulting legal uncertainties and problems with enforceability of vague, broad and/or subjective criteria or because tool makers are generally not held responsible for other people's use of their tools. Nevertheless some projects include legally non-binding pleas to
1909-669: Is qualitatively different from software and is subject to different requirements. Debian accepted, in a later resolution, that the GNU FDL complied with the Debian Free Software Guidelines when the controversial " invariant section " is removed, but considers it "still not free of trouble". Notwithstanding, most GNU documentation includes "invariant sections". Similarly, the FLOSS Manuals foundation, an organization devoted to creating manuals for free software, decided to eschew
1992-414: Is run through a compiler or interpreter to execute on the architecture's hardware. Over time, software has become complex, owing to developments in networking , operating systems , and databases . Software can generally be categorized into two main types: The rise of cloud computing has introduced the new software delivery model Software as a Service (SaaS). In SaaS, applications are hosted by
2075-679: Is that the reference to the GNU General Public License, with which CeCILL v2 is now fully compatible, is explicitly defined precisely using its exact title and the exact name of the Free Software Foundation, to avoid all possible variations of the terms of the GPL v2. Some additional definitions were added to more precisely define the terms with less ambiguity. With these changes, the CeCILL is now fully enforceable according to WIPO rules, and according to French law in courts, without
2158-405: Is the fact that the English text was approved not as a draft translation (as in CeCILL v1) but as an authentic text, in addition to the equally authentic French version. This makes the CeCILL license much easier to enforce internationally, as the cost of producing an authentic translation in any international court will be lower with the help of a second authentic reference text. The second difference
2241-481: Is why they have chosen to prohibit it in GPLv3 . Most newly written free-software licenses since the late 1990s include some form of patent retaliation clauses. These measures stipulate that one's rights under the license (such as to redistribution), may be terminated if one attempts to enforce patents relating to the licensed software, under certain circumstances. As an example, the Apple Public Source License may terminate
2324-453: Is written. Since the 1950s, thousands of different programming languages have been invented; some have been in use for decades, while others have fallen into disuse. Some definitions classify machine code —the exact instructions directly implemented by the hardware—and assembly language —a more human-readable alternative to machine code whose statements can be translated one-to-one into machine code—as programming languages. Programs written in
2407-773: The Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control). It was announced on 5 July 2004 in a joint press communication of the CEA, CNRS and INRIA. It has gained support of the main French Linux User Group and the Minister of Public Function, and was considered for adoption at the European level before the European Union Public Licence
2490-535: The Fedora Project 's packages showed as most used licenses the GPL family, followed by MIT, BSD, the LGP family, Artistic (for Perl packages), LPPL (for texlive packages), and ASL. The GNU GPLv2+ was the single most popular license Software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the execution of a computer . Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software
2573-780: The Open Source Definition rather than the Free Software Definition . It considers Free Software Permissive license group to be a reference implementation of a Free Software license. Thus its requirements for approving licenses are different. The Free Software Foundation , the group that maintains the Free Software Definition , maintains a non-exhaustive list of free-software licences. The Free Software Foundation prefers copyleft ( share-alike ) free-software licensing rather than permissive free-software licensing for most purposes. Its list distinguishes between free-software licenses that are compatible or incompatible with
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2656-438: The high-level programming languages used to create software share a few main characteristics: knowledge of machine code is not necessary to write them, they can be ported to other computer systems, and they are more concise and human-readable than machine code. They must be both human-readable and capable of being translated into unambiguous instructions for computer hardware. The invention of high-level programming languages
2739-467: The licensing of software . Free-software licenses before the late 1980s were generally informal notices written by the developers themselves. These early licenses were of the " permissive " kind. In the mid-1980s, the GNU project produced copyleft free-software licenses for each of its software packages. An early such license (the "GNU Emacs Copying Permission Notice") was used for GNU Emacs in 1985, which
2822-401: The source code available to anyone when they share or sell the object code . In this case, the source code must also contain any changes the developers may have made. If GPL code is used but not shared or sold, the code is not required to be made available and any changes may remain private. This permits developers and organizations to use and modify GPL code for private purposes (that is, when
2905-467: The source code may be used. As a result, BSD code can be used in proprietary software that only acknowledges the authors. For instance, Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 and macOS have proprietary IP stacks which are derived from BSD-licensed software. In extreme cases, the sub- or re-licensing possibilities with BSD or other permissive licenses might prevent further use in the open-source ecosystem. For instance, MathWorks ' FileExchange repository offers
2988-529: The BSD license for user contributions but prevents with additional terms of use any usage beside their own proprietary MATLAB software, for instance with the FOSS GNU Octave software. Supporters of the BSD license argue that it is more free than the GPL because it grants the right to do anything with the source code, provided that the attribution is preserved. The approach has led to BSD code being used in widely used proprietary software. Proponents of
3071-649: The Department of Computer Science at the University of Victoria in Canada, presented a talk in 2013 about the methodological challenges in determining which are the most widely used free-software licenses, and showed how he could not replicate the result from Black Duck Software. A GitHub study in 2015 on their statistical data found that the MIT license was the most prominent FOSS license on that platform. In June 2016 an analysis of
3154-551: The FOSS ecosystem. In this trend companies and new projects ( Mozilla , Apache foundation , and Sun , see also this list ) wrote their own FOSS licenses, or adapted existing licenses. This License proliferation was later recognized as problem for the Free and open-source ecosystem due to the increased complexity of license compatibility considerations. While the creation of new licenses slowed down later, license proliferation and its impact are considered an ongoing serious challenge for
3237-533: The FSF's copyleft GNU General Public License . There exists an ongoing debate within the free-software community regarding the fine line between what restrictions can be applied and still be called "free". Only " public-domain software " and software under a public-domain-like license is restriction-free. Examples of public-domain-like licenses are, for instance, the WTFPL and the CC0 license. Permissive licenses might carry small obligations like attribution of
3320-541: The Free Software Foundation or Debian and the RealNetworks Public Source License , which was accepted by Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation but not by Debian . Also, the FSF recommended GNU Free Documentation License , which is incompatible with the GPL, was considered "non-free" by the Debian project around 2006, Nathanael Nerode, and Bruce Perens . The FSF argues that documentation
3403-651: The Free Software Foundation says it is not free because it infringes the so-called "zero freedom" of the GPL, that is, the freedom to use the software for any purpose. While historically the most widely used FOSS license has been the GPLv2, in 2015, according to Black Duck Software the permissive MIT license dethroned the GPLv2 to the second place while the permissive Apache License follows at third place. A study from 2012, which used publicly available data, criticized Black Duck Software for not publishing their methodology used in collecting statistics. Daniel German, professor in
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3486-562: The GFDL in favor of the GPL for its texts in 2007, citing the incompatibility between the two, difficulties in implementing the GFDL, and the fact that the GFDL "does not allow for easy duplication and modification", especially for digital documentation. SLUC is a software license published in Spain in December 2006 to allow all but military use. The writers of the license maintain it is free software, but
3569-411: The GPL alone, as the license is supported officially by a government which is a full member of WIPO, and by an enforceable law. This also means that all international treaties related to the protection of intellectual rights do apply to CeCILL-licensed products, and so they are enforceable by law in all countries that signed any of the international treaties protected by WIPO. However, this also leaves open
3652-594: The GPL for the distributed computing software GPU in 2005, as well as several software projects trying to exclude use by big cloud providers. As there are several defining organizations and groups who publish definitions and guidelines about FOSS licenses, notably the FSF, the OSI, the Debian project, and the BSDs, there are sometimes conflicting opinions and interpretations. Many users and developers of BSD -based operating systems have
3735-443: The GPL point out that once code becomes proprietary, users are denied the freedoms that define free software. As a result, they consider the BSD license less free than the GPL, and that freedom is more than a lack of restriction. Since the BSD license restricts the right of developers to have changes recontributed to the community, neither it nor the GPL is "free" in the sense of "lacking any restrictions." The Debian project uses
3818-674: The GPLv2 is, by itself, not compatible with the GPLv3. Restrictions on use of a software ("use restrictions") are generally unacceptable according to the FSF, OSI , Debian , or the BSD-based distributions. Examples include prohibiting that the software be used for non-private applications, for military purposes, for comparison or benchmarking, for good use, for ethically questionable means, or in commercial organizations. While some restrictions on user freedom, e.g. concerning nuclear war, seem to enjoy moral support among most free software developers, it
3901-462: The GPLv3 as major update of the GPLv2 was released. The release was controversial due to the significant extended scope of the license, which made it incompatible with the GPLv2. Several major FOSS projects ( Linux kernel , MySQL , BusyBox , Blender , VLC media player ) decided against adopting the GPLv3. On the other hand, in 2009, two years after the release of the GPLv3, Google open-source programs office manager Chris DiBona reported that
3984-689: The USA). Version 2 was developed after consultations with the French-speaking Linux and Free Software Users' Association, the Association pour la Promotion et la Recherche en Informatique Libre , and the Free Software Foundation ; it was released on 21 May 2005. According to the CeCILL FAQ there are no major differences in spirit, though there are in terms. The most notable difference in CeCILL v2
4067-540: The author but allow practically all code use cases. Certain licenses, namely the copyleft licenses , include intentionally stronger restrictions (especially on the distribution/distributor) in order to force derived projects to guarantee specific rights which can't be taken away. The free-software share-alike licenses written by Richard Stallman in the mid-1980s pioneered a concept known as "copyleft". Ensuing copyleft provisions stated that when modified versions of free software are distributed, they must be distributed under
4150-399: The bottleneck. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 hid the details of the hardware and expressed the underlying algorithms into the code . Early languages include Fortran , Lisp , and COBOL . There are two main types of software: Software can also be categorized by how it is deployed . Traditional applications are purchased with a perpetual license for
4233-497: The code or the project is not sold or otherwise shared) without being required to make their changes available to the public. Supporters of GPL claim that by mandating that derivative works remain under the GPL, it fosters the growth of free software and requires equal participation by all users. Opponents of GPL claim that "no license can guarantee future software availability" and that the disadvantages of GPL outweigh its advantages. Some also argue that restricting distribution makes
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#17328446646224316-508: The copyright law recognizes both forms. Free-software licenses provide risk mitigation against different legal threats or behaviors that are seen as potentially harmful by developers: In the early times of software, sharing of software and source code was common in certain communities, for instance academic institutions. Before the US Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) decided in 1974 that "computer programs, to
4399-404: The correctness of code, while user acceptance testing helps to ensure that the product meets customer expectations. There are a variety of software development methodologies , which vary from completing all steps in order to concurrent and iterative models. Software development is driven by requirements taken from prospective users, as opposed to maintenance, which is driven by events such as
4482-400: The cost of poor quality software can be as high as 20 to 40 percent of sales. Despite developers' goal of delivering a product that works entirely as intended, virtually all software contains bugs. The rise of the Internet also greatly increased the need for computer security as it enabled malicious actors to conduct cyberattacks remotely. If a bug creates a security risk, it is called
4565-419: The cost of products. Unlike copyrights, patents generally only apply in the jurisdiction where they were issued. Engineer Capers Jones writes that "computers and software are making profound changes to every aspect of human life: education, work, warfare, entertainment, medicine, law, and everything else". It has become ubiquitous in everyday life in developed countries . In many cases, software augments
4648-603: The criteria laid out in its Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). The only notable cases where Debian and Free Software Foundation disagree are over the Artistic License and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Debian accepts the original Artistic License as being a free software license, but FSF disagrees. This has very little impact however since the Artistic License is almost always used in
4731-560: The developers in any advertising materials", and another license says "modified versions cannot contain additional attribution requirements", then, if someone combined a software package which uses one license with a software package which uses the other, it would be impossible to distribute the combination because these contradictory requirements cannot be fulfilled simultaneously. Thus, these two packages would be license-incompatible. When it comes to copyleft software licenses, they are not inherently compatible with other copyleft licenses, even
4814-493: The extent that they embody an author's original creation, are proper subject matter of copyright", software was not considered copyrightable. Therefore, software had no licenses attached and was shared as public-domain software . The CONTU decision plus court decisions such as Apple v. Franklin in 1983 for object code , clarified that the Copyright Act gave computer programs the copyright status of literary works and started
4897-438: The form of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or open-source software . Software quality assurance is typically a combination of manual code review by other engineers and automated software testing . Due to time constraints, testing cannot cover all aspects of the software's intended functionality, so developers often focus on the most critical functionality. Formal methods are used in some safety-critical systems to prove
4980-593: The free and open-source ecosystem. From the free-software licenses, the GNU GPL version 2 has been tested in to court, first in Germany in 2004 and later in the US. In the German case the judge did not explicitly discuss the validity of the GPL's clauses but accepted that the GPL had to be adhered to: "If the GPL were not agreed upon by the parties, defendant would notwithstanding lack the necessary rights to copy, distribute, and make
5063-439: The functionality of existing technologies such as household appliances and elevators . Software also spawned entirely new technologies such as the Internet , video games , mobile phones , and GPS . New methods of communication, including email , forums , blogs , microblogging , wikis , and social media , were enabled by the Internet. Massive amounts of knowledge exceeding any paper-based library are now available with
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#17328446646225146-771: The legal problems remaining in GPL version 2 outside the United States. Version 2.1 was released in June 2013. It allows relicensing to the GNU Affero General Public License and the European Union Public License as well as the GPL, and clarifies the language that requires licensees to give access to the source code (which had previously caused rejection of version 2.0 by the Open Source Initiative). Note that CeCILL v1 already allowed replacing
5229-492: The license less free. Whereas proponents would argue that not preserving freedom during distribution would make it less free. For example, a non-copyleft license does not grant the author the freedom to see modified versions of his or her work if it gets publicly published, whereas a copyleft license does grant that freedom. During the 1990s, free-software licenses began including clauses, such as patent retaliation , in order to protect against software patent litigation cases –
5312-429: The licensee's choice. It does not grant a patent license (as some other common open-source licenses do), but rather includes a promise by the licensor not to enforce any patents it owns. In Article 9.4, the licensor agrees to provide "technical and legal assistance" if litigation regarding the software is brought against the licensee, though the extent of the assistance "shall be decided on a case-by-case basis...pursuant to
5395-597: The mid-1970s and is vested in the company that makes the software, not the employees or contractors who wrote it. The use of most software is governed by an agreement ( software license ) between the copyright holder and the user. Proprietary software is usually sold under a restrictive license that limits copying and reuse (often enforced with tools such as digital rights management (DRM)). Open-source licenses , in contrast, allow free use and redistribution of software with few conditions. Most open-source licenses used for software require that modifications be released under
5478-589: The number of open-source projects licensed software that had moved to GPLv3 from GPLv2 was 50%, counting the projects hosted at Google Code . In 2011, four years after the release of the GPLv3, 6.5% of all open-source licensed projects were GPLv3 while 42.5% were still GPLv2 according to Black Duck Software data. Following in 2011 451 Group analyst Matthew Aslett argued in a blog post that copyleft licenses went into decline and permissive licenses increased, based on statistics from Black Duck Software. In 2015 according to Black Duck Software and GitHub statistics,
5561-472: The operating system) can take this saved file and execute it as a process on the computer hardware. Some programming languages use an interpreter instead of a compiler. An interpreter converts the program into machine code at run time , which makes them 10 to 100 times slower than compiled programming languages. Software is often released with the knowledge that it is incomplete or contains bugs. Purchasers knowingly buy it in this state, which has led to
5644-568: The permissive MIT license dethroned the GPLv2 as most popular free-software license to the second place while the permissive Apache license follows already at third place. In June 2016 an analysis of Fedora Project 's packages revealed as most used licenses the GPL, MIT, BSD, and the LGPL . The group Open Source Initiative (OSI) defines and maintains a list of approved open-source licenses . OSI agrees with FSF on all widely used free-software licenses, but differ from FSF's list, as it approves against
5727-548: The physical world may also be part of the requirements for a software patent to be held valid. Software patents have been historically controversial . Before the 1998 case State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc. , software patents were generally not recognized in the United States. In that case, the Supreme Court decided that business processes could be patented. Patent applications are complex and costly, and lawsuits involving patents can drive up
5810-520: The possibility that the French government will make a future version of the CeCILL unfree and restricted. The CeCILL license is approved as a "Free Software" license by the FSF with which the CeCILL project founders have worked. Since version 2.1, CeCILL is also approved by the Open Source Initiative as an "Open Source" license. The CeCILL project also adds two other licenses: These two licenses are also defined to make BSD-like and FSF's LGPL licenses enforceable internationally under WIPO rules. Although
5893-408: The release. Over time, the level of maintenance becomes increasingly restricted before being cut off entirely when the product is withdrawn from the market. As software ages , it becomes known as legacy software and can remain in use for decades, even if there is no one left who knows how to fix it. Over the lifetime of the product, software maintenance is estimated to comprise 75 percent or more of
5976-415: The rights-holder (usually the author) of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software (or free and open-source software ) as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as
6059-424: The same license, which can create complications when open-source software is reused in proprietary projects. Patents give an inventor an exclusive, time-limited license for a novel product or process. Ideas about what software could accomplish are not protected by law and concrete implementations are instead covered by copyright law . In some countries, a requirement for the claimed invention to have an effect on
6142-452: The same terms as the original software. Hence they are referred to as "share and share alike " or " quid pro quo ". This results in the new software being open source as well. Since copyleft ensures that later generations of the software grant the freedom to modify the code, this is "free software". Non-copyleft licenses do not ensure that later generations of the software will remain free. Developers who use GPL code in their product must make
6225-404: The software 'netfilter/iptables' publicly available." Because the defendant did not comply with the GPL, it had to cease use of the software. The US case ( MySQL vs Progress) was settled before a verdict was arrived at, but at an initial hearing, Judge Saris "saw no reason" that the GPL would not be enforceable. Around 2004 lawyer Lawrence Rosen argued in the essay Why the public domain isn't
6308-607: The three CeCILL licenses were developed and used for strategic French research systems (in the domain of defense, space launching systems, medical research, meteorology/climatology, and various domains of fundamental or applied physics), they are made to be usable also by the general public or any other commercial or non-profit organization, including from other governments, simply because these software component need and use (or are integrated with) component software or systems which were initially released with an open-source or free license, and they are operated by organizations that also have
6391-431: The total development cost. Completing a software project involves various forms of expertise, not just in software programmers but also testing, documentation writing, project management , graphic design , user experience , user support, marketing , and fundraising. Software quality is defined as meeting the stated requirements as well as customer expectations. Quality is an overarching term that can refer to
6474-467: The user, prominently SQLite . Among the repeated attempts by developers to regulate user behavior through the license that sparked wider debate are Douglas Crockford 's (joking) “no evil” clause, which affected the release process of the Debian distribution in 2012 and got the JSMin-PHP project expelled from Google Code , the addition of a pacifist condition based on Asimov's First Law of Robotics to
6557-478: Was created. The CeCILL grants users the right to copy, modify, and distribute the licensed software freely. It defines the rights as passing from the copyright holder to a "Licensor", which may be the copyright holder or a further distributor, to the user or "Licensee". Like the GPL, it requires that modifications to the software be distributed under the CeCILL, but it makes no claim to work that executes in "separate address spaces", which may be licensed under terms of
6640-513: Was published. Version 2 of the GPL, released in 1991, went on to become the most widely used free-software license. Starting in the mid-1990s and until the mid-2000s, the open-source movement pushed and focused the free-software idea forward in the wider public and business perception. In the Dot-com bubble time, Netscape Communications ' step to release its webbrowser under a FOSS license in 1998, inspired many other companies to adapt to
6723-529: Was revised into the "GNU Emacs General Public License" in late 1985, and clarified in March 1987 and February 1988. Likewise, the similar GCC General Public License was applied to the GNU Compiler Collection , which was initially published in 1987. The original BSD license is also one of the first free-software licenses, dating to 1988. In 1989, version 1 of the GNU General Public License (GPL)
6806-401: Was simultaneous with the compilers needed to translate them automatically into machine code. Most programs do not contain all the resources needed to run them and rely on external libraries . Part of the compiler's function is to link these files in such a way that the program can be executed by the hardware. Once compiled, the program can be saved as an object file and the loader (part of
6889-453: Was to make the well-known open-source and free licenses fully compatible and protected under the French law and the many international treaties ratified by France. Free software license Higher categories: Software , freedom A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but
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