Complete guide to open source licenses for developers

• linux

  983 170,949 10.0 C

  Linux kernel source tree

Projects using the GNU GPL: Linux Kernel, WordPress (GNU GPL-2.0), Solidity, the Smart Contract Programming Language (GNU GPL v3.0), Grafana (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0), FFmpeg (GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1), Signal (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0)

• Grafana

  380 60,503 10.0 TypeScript

  The open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.

  

Projects using the GNU GPL: Linux Kernel, WordPress (GNU GPL-2.0), Solidity, the Smart Contract Programming Language (GNU GPL v3.0), Grafana (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0), FFmpeg (GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1), Signal (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0)

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com featured

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• Signal-Server

  200 8,840 9.8 Java

  Server supporting the Signal Private Messenger applications on Android, Desktop, and iOS

  

Projects using the GNU GPL: Linux Kernel, WordPress (GNU GPL-2.0), Solidity, the Smart Contract Programming Language (GNU GPL v3.0), Grafana (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0), FFmpeg (GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1), Signal (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0)

• open-source-logiciel-libre

  1 36 3.1 HTML

  Open Source Software Requirements and Guidance (Draft) - Exigences et guides liés aux logiciels libres (Ébauche)

  

Canadian government license for open source. According to the text, the license can be classified as permissive. However, as noted in the License text, the license is also subject to "Crown Copyright".

• perl5

  87 1,844 9.9 Perl

  🐪 The Perl programming language

  

An example of using multiple licenses is the Perl programming language. It has a GPL license, which is placed in the Copying file, and the Artistic license is also placed in the root directory. The Readme states that it is possible to distribute and/or modify the project according to the terms of one of the licenses.

• OpenPDF

  15 3,327 9.5 Java

  OpenPDF is a free Java library for creating and editing PDF files, with a LGPL and MPL open source license. OpenPDF is based on a fork of iText. We welcome contributions from other developers. Please feel free to submit pull-requests and bugreports to this GitHub repository.

  

In addition, the License file may not contain the text of the license directly but information about the licenses under which the project is published or which projects/libraries are included in it. For example OpenPDF.

• RocksDB

  43 27,448 9.8 C++

  A library that provides an embeddable, persistent key-value store for fast storage.

  

The keyword License or COPYING must be placed at the beginning of the file name, for example, License.BSD, License_MIT. An excellent example of how to organize multiple licenses - RocksDB

• SaaSHub

  www.saashub.com featured

  SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

  

• kubernetes

  663 107,048 10.0 Go

  Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management

  

For example: Kubernetes example, Elasticsearch client license, CockroachDB.

• Elasticsearch

  91 67,708 10.0 Java

  Free and Open, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine

  

For example: Kubernetes example, Elasticsearch client license, CockroachDB.

• cockroach

  100 29,148 10.0 Go

  CockroachDB - the open source, cloud-native distributed SQL database.

  

For example: Kubernetes example, Elasticsearch client license, CockroachDB.

• React

  1,700 222,406 9.9 JavaScript

  The library for web and native user interfaces.

  

Case: Facebook was using a BSD license plus their custom Additional Grant of Patent Rights. License was changed to MIT on September 26, 2017, and the Patent grant was deleted. Some companies decide not to use React in their project because of the patent grant.

• cla-assistant

  7 1,276 3.6 JavaScript

  Contributor License Agreement assistant (CLA assistant)

  

Open source Contributor License Agreement assistant

• terraform

  501 41,235 9.9 Go

  Terraform enables you to safely and predictably create, change, and improve infrastructure. It is a source-available tool that codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed, and versioned.

  

Mozilla Public License 2.0 (uses Terraform).

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