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PRTW: Penguinistas Rule The World!
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Open Source Licencing
More than One Licence
There are actually a number of different open source licences, with slight variations in each one. Some licenses are designed specifically for software, and others designed specifically for documentation or similar literary content. What follows is a listing of different licences with links to each one, and a few notes highlighting notable differences in each one. This listing and explanation is not exhaustive in any way, but points out some of the major licences and a few of their distinctives. Links to the licenses in question and to additional related resources are provided for further research.
Penguinista.org publishes its content under the Penguinista Open Content License (POCL), which is based on principles from several of the major open source or open publication licenses.
List of Major Open Source Licenses
The Public Domain is the absence of ownership of intellectual property rights, which negates the need for a license. An intellectual property can end in several ways, the most common being expiration of copyright or patent, and the right holder's express renunciation of rights in the work.
The General Public License, or GNU GPL (aka CopyLeft), was written by Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation (FSF) to apply to software code, and is probably the most well-known open source licence.
The Lesser General Public License, or GNU LGPL, was also written by Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation (FSF) to apply to software code under special circumstances, usually relating to non-free elements of the code.
The Free Documentation License, or FDL, was also written by Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation (FSF) to apply specifically to software documentation rather than the software code itself.
The X11 Licence is the Open Group's licence terms for the X Window System, and also forms the basis of the XFree86 licence.
The Berkeley Systems Design (BSD) Licence exists in the Original Version and the Modified Version; the latter removes the "BSD Advertising Clause" which the FSF saw as problematic.
The Apache Licence is also seen as problematic by the FSF.
The Mozilla Public Licence (MPL)
The Netscape Public Licence (NPL)
The Open Content Licence and Open Publication Licence are both confusingly abbreviated as OPL, but they are not identical. The latter also has licence options which may be invoked, so not every usage of this licence is identical.
Fair Use Doctrine is not a license, but is an important concept in copyright issues. Under fair use doctine, a copyright holder never actually acquires complete control over the work, only those facets of control allowed by the particular jurisdiction's copyright laws. Copyright holders cannot bar "fair use" of the work by members of the public, but what exactly constitutes "fair use" varies by jurisdiction, and by context.
Full Copyrights, Patents, & Trademarks all vary, but each one restricts the terms of use to a much larger degree than any of the licences previously noted.
Further Resources & Related Material
The Debian Social Contract
The FSF's Licence List
The OSI's Official Open Source Definition
The OSI's Approved Licence List
The OSI's Certification Mark & Program
The Common License Working Group's License List
Caution: This summary is provided as a research aid only and is not intended in any way to provide legal advice. You should consult your attorney regarding any legal question, as generalizations concerning the law cannot address specific situations. Regarding the various licenses linked from this page, you should refer to the licenses themselves and to authorities interpreting them, as both the licenses and their interpretation may change from time to time without such changes being noted at this location.