Free & Open Source Software Licenses

• ✅ -> Yes
• ❌ -> No
• 🔶 -> Permissive / Maybe
• ❓ -> Not defined

Open Source Software vs Free Software vs Freeware

	Free Software	Open Source Software	Freeware	Public Domain Software
Organization	Free Software Foundation (FSF)	Open Source Initiative (OSI)	The owner, author or vendor	Creative Commons (CCD)
Definition	Free is a matter of liberty, not price	Open doesn't just mean access to the source code	Free refers to price, while freedom of the use is restricted to the creator	Public Domain belongs to the public as whole
Philosophy	Social Movement	Development Methodology	Marketing goals	Copyright disclamation
Free of charge	🔶	🔶	✅	✅
Copyright law	✅	✅	✅	❌
Examples	- Debian - Ubuntu - LibreOffice - MySQL - Firefox	- Debian - Ubuntu - LibreOffice - MySQL - Firefox	- Telegram - Adobe Reader - Skype - LinkedIn	- SQLite

Proprietary vs Copyleft vs Permissive vs Creative Common

• Distribution: distribution of the code to third parties
• Modification: modification of the code by a licensee
• Sublicensing: whether modified code may be licensed under a different license (for example a copyright) or must retain the same license under which it was provided

	Proprietary	Copyleft	Permissive	Creative Common
Distribution	❌	🔶	🔶	✅
Modification	❌	🔶	🔶	✅
Sublicensing	❌	❌	✅	✅
Source code open	❌	✅	🔶	❓
Creator bugs liability	✅	✅	❌	❌
Exemples	No public licence (proprietary)	- GPL - AGPL	- MIT License - Apache License - BSD License	- PD - CC0 License

MIT vs BSD vs Apache vs GPL vs LGPL vs AGPL

	Apache	BSD	MIT	GPLv3	LGPLv3	AGPLv3
Type	Permissive	Permissive	Permissive	Copyleft	Copyleft	Copyleft
Copyright protection	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Commercial usage	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Usage in proprietary projects	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌
Examples	- Kubernetes - Swift - Firebase	- Django - React - Flutter	- Angular.js - Jquery - .NET Core - Laravel	- Joomla - Notepad++ - MySQL	- Qt - SharpDevelop	- SugarCRM - Launchpad

Sources

Comparison of free and open-source software licenses

Open-source Licensing and Terminologies

Understanding open-source and free software licensing