Java Tutorial - Java Script : Open Source Licenses by Java Tutorial

Java Tutorial - Java Script :

Open Source Licenses

In the previous discussion, we mentioned the GNU Public License, or GPL.The GPL works because of the power of the copyright laws. The copyright establishes ownership. The holder of the copyright is the owner of the software.The owner of the software is able to establish the rules for allowable use of their property by others.

These rules are stated in a license. A license is a legal document that gives permission to do specified things or defines restrictions on what can be done.In the following sections, we look at several of the most popular open source software licenses.

Many open source programs share or reuse the licenses from other projects. The GPL for example is used by many projects that are not a part of the GNU project or other FSF efforts. For each license, we try to cover Leveraging Open Source Software the most important features of the license and discuss any issues that may arise when combining products with different licenses.Many of the licenses have similarities.

 Almost all of the licenses have a provision that states that the software is not covered under any warranties and that use of the software constitutes acceptance of the license. Some licenses also require that changes to the code be clearly marked and distributed separately

to avoid confusion with base distributions.All of the licenses that we discuss in the following sections are recognized by the OSI as open source licenses.