TU Delft Approved Software Licenses

Software
Licenses
Author

Esther Plomp

Published

December 19, 2022

A brief overview of the TU Delft Approved Software Licenses.

Permissive licences

Permissive: MIT, BSD, Apache, CC0

Permissive licenses allow you to (commercially) use, copy, modify, merge, publish, and distribute the software.

Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code.

  • CC0: Waives copyright and dedicates it to the public domain

  • MIT License: Short and simple license

  • BSD

    • BSD 2: Similar to MIT license (with more details)

    • BSD 3: Contains a clause restricting use of the names of contributors for endorsement of a derived code without specific permission

    • BSD 3 - Clear: Provides an option to place the OSS licensed material under patent

  • Apache Licence 2: User does not have to worry about infringing any patents (user is granted a licence to any patent that covers the software)

Restrictive licences

Restrictive/Copyleft: GPL, AGPL, LGPL, EUPL

Restrictive/Copyleft licenses allow you to (commercially) use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute the software

Derivative code must be open source and distributed under the same or equivalent license

  • GNU General Public Licence (GNU GPLv3, GPLv2): Does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs

    • GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0: Lighter version of GPL. A larger work using the licensed work through interfaces provided by the licensed work may be distributed under different terms and without source code for the larger work. Designed for library routines.

    • GNU Affero General Public License v3.0Stricter version of GPL. If you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, then your server must also allow them to download the source code.

  • European Union Public Licence (EUPL): Created and approved by the European Commission. It is available in 23 European languages. Confirms with all existing (civil law) copyright laws of the EU (limitations of liability and warranty have been precisely defined).

Comparison of Licences

Comparison between the TU Delft approved licences
Permissions Conditions Conditions Conditions Conditions Limitations
License Patent use Disclose source Network use is distribution Same License State Changes Trademark use
MIT
BSD v2, 3 Y or N (BSDClear)
Apache v2 Y Y N
GPL v3 Y Y Y Y
AGPL Y Y Y Y Y
LGPL Y Y Y (library) Y
EUPL Y Y Y Y Y N
CCO N N N N N N

See https://choosealicense.com/appendix/ for a complete overview

Compatability of licences

Compatibility of licences indicated, where CCO, MIT, BSD, Apache and EUPL are compatible with one another. Incompatibility exists between GPL and Apache, EUPL.

TU Delft Guidelines on Research Software, page 19

Compatibility of permissive and copyleft licences explained

From A Quick Guide to Software Licensing for the Scientist-Programmer. In general, permissively licensed code is forward compatible with any other license type. However, only permissive licenses, such as the BSD and MIT, can feed into other permissive licenses. Restrictive licenses like the GPL are backward compatible with themselves and permissive licenses, but must adopt the restrictive license from then on. Proprietary licenses can incorporate upstream permissively licensed code, but by definition are incompatible with any other downstream license. Grey represents actions that are not permitted without negotiating a separate license agreement with the rights owner. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002598.g002

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