Open Source Licenses by Category

License Index

• License Approval Process
• License Information
• Origins and definitions of categories from the License Proliferation Committee report

License that are popular and widely used or with strong communities

• Apache License, 2.0 (Apache-2.0)
• BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" license (BSD-3-Clause)
• BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" or "FreeBSD" license (BSD-2-Clause)
• GNU General Public License (GPL)
• GNU Library or "Lesser" General Public License (LGPL)
• MIT license (MIT)
• Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0)
• Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL-1.0)
• Eclipse Public License (EPL-1.0)

Special purpose licenses

• Educational Community License, Version 2.0 (ECL-2.0)
• IPA Font License (IPA)
• NASA Open Source Agreement 1.3 (NASA-1.3)
• Open Font License 1.1 (OFL-1.1)

Other/Miscellaneous licenses

• Adaptive Public License (APL-1.0)
• Artistic license 2.0 (Artistic-2.0)
• Open Software License (OSL-3.0)
• Q Public License (QPL-1.0)
• zlib/libpng license (Zlib)

Licenses that are redundant with more popular licenses

• Academic Free License (AFL-3.0)
• Attribution Assurance Licenses (AAL)
• Eiffel Forum License V2.0 (EFL-2.0)
• Fair License (Fair)
• Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer (HPND)
• Lucent Public License Version 1.02 (LPL-1.02)
• The PostgreSQL License (PostgreSQL)
• University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License (NCSA)
• X.Net License (Xnet)

Non-reusable licenses

• Apple Public Source License (APSL-2.0)
• Computer Associates Trusted Open Source License 1.1 (CATOSL-1.1)
• CUA Office Public License Version 1.0 (CUA-OPL-1.0)
• EU DataGrid Software License (EUDatagrid)
• Entessa Public License (Entessa)
• Frameworx License (Frameworx-1.0)
• IBM Public License (IPL-1.0)
• LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL-1.3c)
• Motosoto License (Motosoto)
• Multics License (Multics)
• Naumen Public License (Naumen)
• Nethack General Public License (NGPL)
• Nokia Open Source License (Nokia)
• OCLC Research Public License 2.0 (OCLC-2.0)
• PHP License (PHP-3.0)
• Python License (Python-2.0) (overall Python license)
• CNRI Python license (CNRI-Python) (CNRI portion of Python License)
• RealNetworks Public Source License V1.0 (RPSL-1.0)
• Ricoh Source Code Public License (RSCPL)
• Sleepycat License (Sleepycat)
• Sun Public License (SPL-1.0)
• Sybase Open Watcom Public License 1.0 (Watcom-1.0)
• Vovida Software License v. 1.0 (VSL-1.0)
• W3C License (W3C)
• wxWindows Library License (WXwindows)
• Zope Public License (ZPL-2.0)

Superseded licenses

• Apache Software License 1.1 (Apache-1.1)
• Common Public License 1.0 (CPL-1.0)
• Artistic license 1.0 (Artistic-1.0)
• Educational Community License, Version 1.0 (ECL-1.0)
• Eiffel Forum License V1.0 (EFL-1.0)
• Lucent Public License ("Plan9"), version 1.0 (LPL-1.0)
• Mozilla Public License 1.0 (MPL-1.0)
• Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL-1.1)
• Open Software License 1.0 (OSL-1.0)
• Open Software License 2.1 (OSL-2.1)
• Reciprocal Public License, version 1.1 (RPL-1.1)

Licenses that have been voluntarily retired

• Intel Open Source License (Intel)
• Jabber Open Source License
• MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW)
• Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)

Uncategorized Licenses

• Boost Software License (BSL-1.0)
• Common Public Attribution License 1.0 (CPAL-1.0)
• European Union Public License (EUPL-1.1)
• GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL-3.0)
• ISC License (ISC)
• Microsoft Public License (MS-PL)
• Microsoft Reciprocal License (MS-RL)
• MirOS Licence (MirOS)
• Non-Profit Open Software License 3.0 (NPOSL-3.0)
• NTP License (NTP)
• Reciprocal Public License 1.5 (RPL-1.5)
• Simple Public License 2.0 (SimPL-2.0)
• Open Group Test Suite License (OGTSL)