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Open source licenses: Everything you need to know

Open source makes the technology world go ’round, forming as much as 90% of the modern software stack via frameworks; libraries; databases; operating systems; and countless standalone applications.

The benefits of open source software are well understood, promising greater control and transparency. However, there’s a perennial struggle between the open source and proprietary realms, leading many companies to retreat from open source to protect their commercial interests. At the heart of all this is the thorny issue of licensing.

There are two broad kinds of licenses that meet the formal open source definition as laid out by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). “Permissive” licenses carry few restrictions in terms of how users can modify and distribute the software, making them popular with companies that wish to use it commercially. And then there are “copyleft” licenses, which offer similar freedoms but with one notable caveat: Any modified version of the software must also be distributed under the same original copyleft license. This isn’t so appealing to businesses wishing to protect their proprietary work.

But there is more to it than that, with various licenses existing within each bucket. Moreover, there are countless licenses that, while not strictly open source, are also worth knowing about.

fattestCEO
fattestCEO
https://second.smadeandsmight.com

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