Software Licenses
With software becoming more prevalent in our everyday lives, we should become familiar with important concepts such as software licensing. Despite software licensing presenting as quite a tricky concept, consumers should endeavour to learn the ins and outs of it in order to improve software innovation.
What is Software Licenses???
Software license is a license agreement that gives an individual, company, or organization permission to use a software program. For example, in most situations, it is illegal to purchase one copy of a program and copy it onto multiple computers. Instead of requiring tens, hundreds, or thousands of individually licensed copies of a program, companies often purchase site licenses which scale according to the number of installed users.
Why Software Licenses???
Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights, are proprietary software and free and open-source software. The distinct conceptual difference between the two is the granting of rights to modify and re-use a software product obtained by a customer: Free and open-source software software licenses both rights to the customer and therefore bundles the modifiable source code with the software, while proprietary software typically does not license these rights and therefore keeps the source code hidden .
In addition to granting rights and imposing restrictions on the use of copyrighted software, software licenses typically contain provisions which allocate liability and responsibility between the parties entering into the license agreement. In enterprise and commercial software transactions, these terms often include limitations of liability, warranties and warranty disclaimers, and indemnity if the software infringes intellectual property rights of anyone.
Types of Software Licenses
There is five types of software licenses
1.Public domain
- This is the most permissive type of software license. When software is in the public domain, anyone can modify and use the software without any restrictions. But you should always make sure it’s secure before adding it to your own codebase.
2.Permissive
- Permissive licenses are also known as “Apache style” or “BSD style.” They contain minimal requirements about how the software can be modified or redistributed. This type of software license is perhaps the most popular license used with free and open source software. Aside from the Apache License and the BSD License, another common variant is the MIT License.
3.LGPL
- The GNU Lesser General Public License allows you to link to open source libraries in your software. If you simply compile or link an LGPL-licensed library with your own code, you can release your application under any license you want, even a proprietary license. But if you modify the library or copy parts of it into your code, you’ll have to release your application under similar terms as the LGPL.
4.Copyleft
- Copyleft licenses are also known as reciprocal licenses or restrictive licenses. The most well-known example of a copyleft or reciprocal license is the GPL. These licenses allow you to modify the licensed code and distribute new works based on it, as long as you distribute any new works or adaptations under the same software license. For example, a component’s license might say the work is free to use and distribute for personal use only. So any derivative you create would also be limited to personal use only.
5.Proprietary
- Of all types of software licenses, this is the most restrictive. The idea behind it is that all rights are reserved. It’s generally used for proprietary software where the work may not be modified or redistributed.
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