Licenses: Commercial, Proprietary, Non-Open source & Open Source

OSS have Open Source License:

Allows: Modification & Redistribution Disallows: Discriminatory or over restrictive access to source code

Copyright: A set of legal protections granted by law

License: How copyright holder grants permissions to licensee/party

Open source operates under/within licensing covered by copyright law

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OPEN SOURCE LICENSES:

Types of Open Source Licenses:

  1. Copyleft License: Requires distribution of source code. Difficult compliance & extensive obligations
    1. Weak Copyleft - LGPL, Mozilla, Eclipse, CPL
    2. Strong Copyleft - GPLv2/v3 , AGPL
    3. Extreme Copyleft - SSPL, NPSL
  2. Attribution Style License: Requires distribution of copyright & license. Easy compliance & Simple obligations.
    1. No Copyleft - BSD, MIT, Apache

GPL - GNU General Public License (Original Type of Copyleft License)

ISSUES:

  1. Contamination of Source Code -
    1. Merges GPL with non-GPL code & Imposes GPL Terms on other software
    2. Method of interaction either by static linking i.e. direct sharing. Set of routines, external functions & variables that are resolved in a caller at compile time (high risk)
    3. or by dynamic linking like sharing memory spaces. Subroutines of a library are loaded into application program at runtime (moderate risk)