Comparison of open source licenses Jan Krüger <jk@jk.gs>, http://jan-krueger.net/ Version 1.0, 2011-03-11

Apache 2.0 Artistic 2.0 BSD (L)GPL MIT zlib Must include source no no no yes no no Viral1 semi2 semi no yes /semi (LGPL)3 no no Upgrade provisions4 no no no yes no no May charge for copies5 yes no 6 yes yes yes yes Retain copyright notices source7 yes yes yes yes no Anti-misrepresent clause no yes no optional (v3) no yes Anti-advertising clause no no yes optional (v3) no no Anti-obfuscation clause no yes no yes (v3) no no Prevent fork misrepresent no yes no optional (v3) no yes Prevent copy protection no no no yes (v3) no no Include license yes yes yes yes yes source Restrict distribution of forks no yes 8 no no no no Limited disclaimer9 yes yes no yes no no

Artistic license

For distribution of forks, clearly document changes and (a) send upstream, (b) name differently and play nice with original, or (c) license it under a license that fulfills certain criteria. You must not charge licensing fees for packages that include the work. When the original work’s API/interface is not exposed, your derived work is not restricted by any other terms. The same applies if you distribute bugfixes or portability fixes.

GPL/LGPL

Entries specific to version 3 (“v3” suffix) mean that the answer for version 2 is no .

General remarks

Accuracy: I do not guarantee that the information in this table is correct, even though I made every effort to check it. Some details are omitted, so you shouldn’t exclusively rely on this table, anyway.

License: This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

URLs: HTML version at http://j.mp/opensource-licenses, link to PDF version at http://jan-krueger.net/opensource-licenses