Free and Open Source software licenses explained

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This video is distributed under the Creative Commons Share Alike license.

00:00 Intro
00:39 Sponsor: 100$ off your Linux or Gaming server
01:31 GNU General Public License (GPL)
04:43 MIT License
06:00 Apache License
07:44 BSD License
09:06 Creative Commons
11:47 Quick Recap
12:55 Sponsor: Get a laptop or desktop with Linux from Tuxedo
14:09 I'm just a poor boy...

Let's begin with the GNU General Public License. The original GPL was created by Richard Stallman in 1989. It's what we call a copyleft license: all modifications made have to be redistributed under the same terms.

The GPL generally gives you the right to download and use, modify, and redistribute the code using the license, without any restrictions.

A lot of projects use the GPL, like the Linux kernel, most GNU software, Wordpress, Notepad++, or Git. Also, any project under the GPL can be sold, by the original creator, or anyone else, whether they modified the code or not, but the person who bought that software has every right to redistribute the code for free themselves.

Another much used license is the MIT license, with about 31% of FOSS projects using it in 2021. It's been created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, and it's also a free software license, that grants you the rights to copy, modify, merge, or distribute the code.

It's a very permissive license, much more flexible than the GPL, as it doesn't restrict what you can do with the code you're using, there is no copyleft or copyright included, so you can include code licensed under the MIT license in your proprietary software, and not redistribute your changes

On to the Apache license, also used a lot, by 14% of FOSS projects in 2021.

The Apache license is some form of middle ground between the GPL and the MIT license. It grants you all the free software freedoms of downloading, using, modifying, distributing, and selling software using the license, whether it's for personal, internal or commercial use.

The Apache license isn't a copyleft license like the GPL, which means your modifications don't have to use the Apache License, BUT the original work must still be published under the Apache license, and every modification has to be labeled clearly.

The Apache license is used by Android, the Apache HTTP server, Kubernetes, or the Open 3D Engine.

Then we have the BSD License. It was created by the Berkeley Source Distribution project, known as BSD, originally in 1969. There are multiple variants, but most grant the same freedoms to download, use, modify, redistribute the software, as long as the copyright notice and license are included.

The BSD license doesn't force any modification to be distributed under the terms of the BSD license.

But licences don't only apply to code. You can also license your creative work, like a book, a video, a drawing, any form of photo, or art, basically anything you create can be covered by a license. And one of the most well known and used is the Creative Commons.

There are 6 types of that license:

First, you have the basic "Attribution".
Then you have the Share Alike license, the Non derivative license, the Non Commercial license, the Non commercial Share Alike, and the, share alike, non derivative license.

[iodreamify]

Foss licenses have always made my head spin more than the technicalities between various distributions

[LunaCoco]

One note about X11 and the MIT license: X11 technically uses its own license for the project, but in effect it is exactly the same as the MIT license, just with more weird verbosity.

[kuhluhOG]

I just want to add, that no matter which license a software has, you only need to give the source code out, if you actually give them the software. And then also only to these people, you don't need to make a public download place available.
You cannot stop the people you gave the software and source code to tho, to not redistribute it (under some licenses, like GPL). But you DON'T need to give people the source code to your software, if they got it via a third party. E.g. A gives software (s) and source code (sc) to B. Then B gives s to C. A does not need to the sc to C, only B needs to.

[that_leaflet]

Another interesting license is Creative Commons Zero (CC0). When using the license, you give up all copyrights (well, as much as the law allows).

[elatronion]

I have created multiple open source games! :)
Licensing the content (art, story, etc) never came to mind until recently,
all of these licensing stuff is quite complex, I'm glad videos like these exist to help clear up some things!
I have already released many of my content, videos, etc under CC as well! :D

[scottfranco]

The purpose of the BSD license is "don't sue us", that the original writers are not responsible for your use of the software nor any possible harm resulting from it. I license everything I do online with BSD.

[JoussefJouda]

This is by far the best video that explains the open source licenses. You are a good teacher. Big like to your video!

[kaalsemulzii]

One of the best explanation. I see why the BSD fans like to say it's license makes the code more free, but it's just the freedom of the developer. I'd rather think that the GPL is about the freedom of the users, don't know if it's that clearly black and white.

[lala-jykz]

For the React, it contains the patent trap underneath the open source surface. If the company uses the React, it means this company is willing to share the usage of all the patents to the Facebook(Meta).

[herzenschein]

There's one important detail missing about the LGPL: you can use an LGPL licensed project to create your own closed source (or proprietary) software. That is the case with Qt, it doesn't really stop you from making proprietary apps with its LGPL modules, and this is true of KDE software too. You just need to obey to the license's restrictions, which includes for instance providing the source code of the LGPL software used by your app (not your app's source code, unless certain conditions apply).
You can even statically compile your proprietary application with LGPL libraries, counter to what may be seen in forums sometimes, as long as you provide the object files needed to relink with the user's version of that LGPL library. See: the GPL FAQ, section "LGPLStaticVsDynamic", and Qt's "Obligations of the GPL and LGPL". (Youtube doesn't seem to like links, so this comment got removed yesterday and I had to repost).
In this respect I'd say it's more permissive than GPL.

[jorge]

I think it would have been interesting to talk about the Linux kernel GPL license, the binary modules, Linus' stance on them, etc.

[vsurya]

That's very informative. I've been recently wondering from where and where not to copy codes for my projects, and you hit me at the right time. Although I still am not confident this at least provides me a direction in which to look for.

[MyReviews_karkan]

Yeah, I'm more confused now 😂
I like the Babywogue bit, BTW.

[thingsiplay]

You should have talked about multi license projects too. Because you can license the project under multiple licenses, where the user can choose one. This is often done with Open Source license and a Proprietary version.

Last but not least, everyone can just write their own license instead using a preexisting one.

[NawidN]

I did not expect baby WOGUE to get a shoutout.

[T--T]

literally was just researching this, awesome timing! thanks!

[cameronbosch]

Even if your videos are CC-NC-SA, if I were to use about 5 seconds or less of your "is GNOME user friendly" video to make a video about which DE is the best for beginners and I use that short clip as a testimony that GNOME may not be the best DE for Windows users switching to Linux, would that be considered fair use and thus not covered under copyright/copyleft?

[lookatcurryman]

Thank you for the video. It’s very informative yet straightforward for someone who just started learning about the licenses.

[dxaniol]

GPL-v3 is the best, no joke, also Open-Source is great!

[alexanderdejong]

Thanks, very clear! I just needed to learn more about licensing for some projects I want to work on.