Let’s dissect thus term by term. First, what is a license?
In a nutshell, a license lists what you can and cannot do with something. They can apply to both software and code as well as things like art and music. You might have heard of Creative Common licenses and things that are “free for noncommercial use” or “only for personal use”.
Open source means that others view, modify, and redistribute the source. They can apply to software as well as hardware, art, music, etc. If you want to look at the specific terms, search up the Open Source Initiative. The Free Software Foundation also has their own definition you could look at.
So, an open-source license is a list of things you can do with something, usually but not always software, that aims to allow others to view, modify, and redistribute the source.
There are multiple open-source licenses, and they each have their pros and cons, but there is a general split between permissive and copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses (like Apache, MIT, etc.) try to provide the user more freedom by having no restriction on how the source can be used, while copyleft licenses (like GPL) aim to ensure that freedom will last by restricting how closed-source projects can use open-source licensed bits.
There is a large debate between the two that I won’t get into, there are plenty of articles available discussing points for each side.
I need to understand what’s an open source license.
Let’s dissect thus term by term. First, what is a license?
In a nutshell, a license lists what you can and cannot do with something. They can apply to both software and code as well as things like art and music. You might have heard of Creative Common licenses and things that are “free for noncommercial use” or “only for personal use”.
Open source means that others view, modify, and redistribute the source. They can apply to software as well as hardware, art, music, etc. If you want to look at the specific terms, search up the Open Source Initiative. The Free Software Foundation also has their own definition you could look at.
So, an open-source license is a list of things you can do with something, usually but not always software, that aims to allow others to view, modify, and redistribute the source.
There are multiple open-source licenses, and they each have their pros and cons, but there is a general split between permissive and copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses (like Apache, MIT, etc.) try to provide the user more freedom by having no restriction on how the source can be used, while copyleft licenses (like GPL) aim to ensure that freedom will last by restricting how closed-source projects can use open-source licensed bits.
There is a large debate between the two that I won’t get into, there are plenty of articles available discussing points for each side.