1. Home

Appendix

For reference, here is a table of every license described in the choosealicense.com repository.

If you’re here to choose a license, start from the home page to see a few licenses that will work for most cases.

License Commercial use Distribution Modification Patent use Private use Disclose source License and copyright notice Network use is distribution Same license State changes Liability Trademark use Warranty
BSD Zero Clause License
Academic Free License v3.0
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Apache License 2.0
Artistic License 2.0
Blue Oak Model License 1.0.0
BSD-2-Clause Plus Patent License
BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License
BSD 3-Clause Clear License
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
BSD 4-Clause "Original" or "Old" License
Boost Software License 1.0
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International
Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal
CeCILL Free Software License Agreement v2.1
CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Permissive
CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Strongly Reciprocal
CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 - Weakly Reciprocal
Educational Community License v2.0
Eclipse Public License 1.0
Eclipse Public License 2.0
European Union Public License 1.1
European Union Public License 1.2
GNU Free Documentation License v1.3
GNU General Public License v2.0
GNU General Public License v3.0
ISC License
GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0
LaTeX Project Public License v1.3c
MIT No Attribution
MIT License
Mozilla Public License 2.0
Microsoft Public License
Microsoft Reciprocal License
Mulan Permissive Software License, Version 2
University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
Open Data Commons Open Database License v1.0
SIL Open Font License 1.1
Open Software License 3.0
PostgreSQL License
The Unlicense
Universal Permissive License v1.0
Vim License
Do What The F*ck You Want To Public License
zlib License

Legend

Open source licenses grant to the public permissions to do things with licensed works which copyright or other "intellectual property" laws might otherwise disallow.

Most open source licenses' grants of permissions are subject to compliance with conditions.

Most open source licenses also have limitations that usually disclaim warranty and liability, and sometimes expressly exclude patents or trademarks from licenses' grants.

Permissions

Commercial use
The licensed material and derivatives may be used for commercial purposes.
Distribution
The licensed material may be distributed.
Modification
The licensed material may be modified.
Patent use
This license provides an express grant of patent rights from contributors.
Private use
The licensed material may be used and modified in private.

Conditions

Disclose source
Source code must be made available when the licensed material is distributed.
A copy of the license and copyright notice must be included with the licensed material.
A copy of the license and copyright notice must be included with the licensed material in source form, but is not required for binaries.
Network use is distribution
Users who interact with the licensed material via network are given the right to receive a copy of the source code.
Same license
Modifications must be released under the same license when distributing the licensed material. In some cases a similar or related license may be used.
Same license (file)
Modifications of existing files must be released under the same license when distributing the licensed material. In some cases a similar or related license may be used.
Same license (library)
Modifications must be released under the same license when distributing the licensed material. In some cases a similar or related license may be used, or this condition may not apply to works that use the licensed material as a library.
State changes
Changes made to the licensed material must be documented.

Limitations

Liability
This license includes a limitation of liability.
Patent use
This license explicitly states that it does NOT grant any rights in the patents of contributors.
Trademark use
This license explicitly states that it does NOT grant trademark rights, even though licenses without such a statement probably do not grant any implicit trademark rights.
Warranty
This license explicitly states that it does NOT provide any warranty.