License library
60 licenses, from permissive to source-available and model licenses.
| License | Family | OSI | FSF free | Projects | In plain words |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache-2.0 Apache-2.0 | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 34Android Open Source Project, Apache Cassandra, Apache CouchDB | Permissive license with an explicit patent grant, patent retaliation and a requirement to mark changed files. |
| Apache-2.0+LLVM Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5LLVM, wasm-tools, Wasmtime | Apache-2.0 plus an exception that removes attribution needs for compiled code and makes it usable with GPL-2.0 projects. |
| BSD-2 BSD-2-Clause | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5FreeBSD, Homebrew, LZ4 | Like MIT: use the code freely; keep the copyright notice and disclaimer in source and binary copies. |
| BSD-3 BSD-3-Clause | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 7Django, Go, NumPy | Like MIT, plus a clause that forbids using your name to endorse derived products. |
| Boost-1.0 BSL-1.0 | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5Asio, Boost C++ Libraries, Catch2 | Permissive license; the notice is required in source copies but not in compiled binaries. |
| ISC ISC | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5lru-cache, minimatch, node-glob | A shorter MIT-equivalent license: any use with the copyright and permission notice kept. |
| MIT MIT | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 25Angular, Astro, Bun | Do almost anything with the code. Keep the copyright and license notice. No warranty. |
| MIT-0 MIT-0 | Permissive | ✓ | Unknown | 5cfn-lint, Powertools for AWS Lambda (.NET), Powertools for AWS Lambda (Java) | MIT without the attribution requirement: use, copy and sell without keeping any notice. |
| MulanPSL-2.0 MulanPSL-2.0 | Permissive | ✓ | Unknown | 5A-Tune, iSulad, openGauss | A Chinese permissive license with a patent grant and retaliation. Chinese and English texts are equally valid; Chinese prevails on conflict. |
| PostgreSQL PostgreSQL | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5pg_cron, pg_partman, pgAdmin 4 | A short permissive license similar to MIT and BSD, used by PostgreSQL and its ecosystem. |
| Unicode-3.0 Unicode-3.0 | Permissive | ✓ | Unknown | 5ICU, ICU4X, Unicode Character Database | Permissive license for Unicode data and software such as ICU and CLDR; keep the notice and do not use the copyright holder's name for promotion. |
| Unlicense Unlicense | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5memchr (Rust crate), ripgrep, xsv | Dedicates the work to the public domain where possible, with a permissive fallback. No attribution is required. |
| UPL-1.0 UPL-1.0 | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5Coherence Community Edition, GraalJS, GraalPy | A short permissive license with an express patent grant, used by Oracle for GraalVM and other projects. |
| Zlib Zlib | Permissive | ✓ | ✓ | 5Bullet Physics, GLFW, SDL | Permissive license: altered source must be marked as altered, the origin must not be misrepresented, and the notice stays in source copies. |
| APSL-2.0 APSL-2.0 | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5Apple Libc, CoreFoundation (CF-Lite), dyld | File-level copyleft by Apple: modified covered files must be published, including when deployed externally as a service. Incompatible with the GPL. |
| Artistic-2.0 Artistic-2.0 | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5MoarVM, npm CLI, Parrot VM | Lets you modify and distribute freely, but a modified version must be clearly marked or renamed, or its source made available. Includes patent terms. |
| CDDL-1.0 CDDL-1.0 | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5illumos, OmniOS, OpenIndiana | File-level copyleft derived from the MPL, with a patent grant; incompatible with the GPL. |
| EPL-1.0 EPL-1.0 | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5Clojure, ClojureScript, core.async | Module-level copyleft with a patent grant and New York governing law; incompatible with the GPL. |
| EPL-2.0 EPL-2.0 | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5Eclipse IDE, Eclipse Jetty, Eclipse Mosquitto | Weak copyleft at the module level with a patent grant; can name the GPL as a secondary license for compatibility. |
| GPL-2.0+CPE GPL-2.0-only WITH Classpath-exception-2.0 | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5Amazon Corretto, Eclipse Temurin, GNU Classpath | GPL-2.0 for the library itself, plus an exception that lets independent programs link to it under any license. |
| LGPL-2.1 LGPL-2.1-only | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 6FFmpeg, GLib, GStreamer | Library copyleft: changes to the library stay open; closed programs may link to it if users can relink with a modified library. |
| LGPL-3.0 LGPL-3.0-only | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5GNU Guile, GNU libunistring, GNU MP (GMP) | Library-level copyleft: changes to the library stay open; closed apps may link to it if users can replace the library. |
| LPPL-1.3c LPPL-1.3c | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 5amsmath, babel (LaTeX), hyperref | Free license for LaTeX packages: modified files must be renamed or clearly marked so documents keep working the same everywhere. |
| MPL-2.0 MPL-2.0 | Weak copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 6Firefox, LibreOffice, OpenBao | File-level copyleft: changes to MPL-licensed files must stay open, but they can be combined with closed code in other files. |
| Perl-5 Artistic-1.0-Perl OR GPL-1.0-or-later | Weak copyleft | Unknown | ✓ | 5Catalyst, DBI, libwww-perl (LWP) | Perl's dual license: recipients choose the Artistic License 1.0 or the GPL (version 1 or later). |
| GPL-2.0 GPL-2.0-only | Strong copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 8Drupal, Git, GNU libunistring | Strong copyleft: distributed derivatives must be released in full under GPL-2.0. No explicit patent grant; incompatible with GPL-3.0 unless 'or later' is used. |
| GPL-3.0 GPL-3.0-only | Strong copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 6Ansible, GCC, GIMP | Strong copyleft: if you distribute the software or derived works, you must release the complete source under GPL-3.0. |
| AGPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0-only | Network copyleft | ✓ | ✓ | 10Elasticsearch, Grafana, Grafana Loki | GPL-3.0 plus a network clause: users who interact with a modified version over a network must be offered its source. |
| BSL-1.1 BUSL-1.1 | Source-available | ✗ | ✗ | 5Akka, Consul, Nomad | Source-available: production use is limited by the Additional Use Grant, and each version converts to an open license after the Change Date (max 4 years). |
| Confluent CL LicenseRef-Confluent-Community-1.0 | Source-available | ✗ | ✗ | 5Confluent REST Proxy, Confluent Schema Registry, Kafka Connect HDFS | Source-available: use, modify and distribute freely, except to offer a SaaS product that competes with Confluent. |
| ELv2 Elastic-2.0 | Source-available | ✗ | ✗ | 5Airbyte, Beats, Elasticsearch | Source-available: free to use and modify, but you may not offer it as a managed service or bypass license keys. |
| FSL-1.1 FSL-1.1-ALv2 | Source-available | ✗ | ✗ | 5Codecov, GitButler, PowerSync Service | Source-available: any use except a competing product, and each release becomes Apache-2.0 two years later. |
| RSALv2 LicenseRef-RSALv2 | Source-available | ✗ | ✗ | 5Redis, RedisBloom, RediSearch | Source-available license by Redis: free to use and modify, but not to offer the software as a managed service or bypass license keys. |
| SSPL-1.0 SSPL-1.0 | Source-available | ✗ | Unknown | 11Beats, Elasticsearch, Graylog | AGPL-like, but offering the software as a service requires releasing the source of the whole service stack. Not OSI-approved. |
| Baichuan 2 LicenseRef-Baichuan-2-Community | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Baichuan2-13B-Base, Baichuan2-13B-Chat, Baichuan2-13B-Chat-4bits | Free commercial use for services below one million daily active users, after registration; larger services need a separate license. |
| BLOOM RAIL 1.0 LicenseRef-BigScience-BLOOM-RAIL-1.0 | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5BLOOM, BLOOM 1B7, BLOOM 3B | The first Responsible AI License for a large language model: open access with use-based restrictions that bind derivatives. |
| ChatGLM License LicenseRef-ChatGLM-Model | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5ChatGLM-6B, ChatGLM2-6B, ChatGLM3-6B | Weights are free for academic research; commercial use is free after registration, subject to use restrictions. |
| DeepSeek License LicenseRef-DeepSeek-Model | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5DeepSeek Coder 33B, DeepSeek LLM 67B, DeepSeek-Coder-V2 | An OpenRAIL-style model license: commercial use allowed, with use-based restrictions that pass to derivatives. |
| Falcon License 2.0 LicenseRef-TII-Falcon-2.0 | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Falcon 2 11B, Falcon Mamba 7B, Falcon-H1 | Apache-2.0-based model license from TII with an acceptable use policy; commercial use allowed without royalties. |
| FLUX.1-dev NC LicenseRef-FLUX-1-dev-Non-Commercial | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5FLUX.1 [dev], FLUX.1 Canny [dev], FLUX.1 Depth [dev] | Model weights for non-commercial use only; commercial use of the weights needs a separate license from Black Forest Labs. |
| Gemma LicenseRef-Gemma | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5CodeGemma, Gemma, Gemma 2 | Google's model terms: commercial use allowed, with a prohibited-use policy that passes to every derivative, including distilled models. |
| Hunyuan Community LicenseRef-Tencent-Hunyuan-Community | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Hunyuan-A13B, Hunyuan-Large, Hunyuan3D-2 | Commercial use allowed with an acceptable use policy; very large services need a separate license, and some territories are excluded. |
| Llama LicenseRef-Llama-Community | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Code Llama, Llama 2, Llama 3.1 | A custom model license: commercial use is allowed, with an Acceptable Use Policy, attribution and naming rules, and a separate license above 700M monthly active users. |
| Mistral Research LicenseRef-Mistral-Research | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Ministral 8B, Mistral Large 2 (2407), Mistral Large 2.1 (2411) | Weights for research and personal use only; any commercial or production use needs a commercial license from Mistral AI. |
| NVIDIA Open Model LicenseRef-NVIDIA-Open-Model | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Cosmos-1.0 Diffusion, Mistral-NeMo-Minitron 8B, Nemotron-4 340B Instruct | Commercially usable model license: derivatives allowed, NVIDIA claims no rights in outputs, but built-in safety guardrails must not be bypassed. |
| OpenRAIL-M LicenseRef-OpenRAIL-M | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5SantaCoder, Stable Diffusion 2.1, Stable Diffusion v1 | A Responsible AI License for models: permissive terms plus use-based restrictions that every derivative must pass on. |
| Stability Community LicenseRef-Stability-AI-Community | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Stable Audio Open, Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large, Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium | Free for research, non-commercial use, and commercial use below USD 1M annual revenue; larger companies need an enterprise license. |
| Qwen License LicenseRef-Tongyi-Qianwen | Model license | ✗ | ✗ | 5Qwen-72B, Qwen1.5-14B, Qwen1.5-72B | Alibaba's model license for the largest Qwen models: commercial use allowed, with attribution and a separate license above 100 million monthly active users. |
| CC BY 4.0 CC-BY-4.0 | Content / data | ✗ | ✓ | 5COCO annotations, Kubernetes documentation, LAION-5B | For content, data and documentation: any use, including commercial, with attribution and an indication of changes. |
| CC BY-NC 4.0 CC-BY-NC-4.0 | Content / data | ✗ | ✗ | 6Aya 23, Command R (open weights), Galactica | For content and data: attribution required and commercial use is not allowed. |
| CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 | Content / data | ✗ | ✗ | 5CS50, Khan Academy content, LibreTexts | For content: attribution, no commercial use, and adaptations under the same license. |
| CC BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA-4.0 | Content / data | ✗ | ✓ | 5SQuAD 2.0, Stack Overflow content, Wikipedia text | Copyleft for content: any use with attribution, and adaptations must be shared under the same license. |
| CC0 CC0-1.0 | Content / data | ✗ | ✓ | 5Common Voice, MusicBrainz core data, OpenAlex | Public-domain dedication for data and content, with a fallback license: no conditions, not even attribution. |
| CDLA-Permissive-1.0 CDLA-Permissive-1.0 | Content / data | ✗ | Unknown | 5DocLayNet, FinTabNet, PubLayNet | Permissive data license from the Linux Foundation: use and share data freely; results such as trained models are not restricted. |
| Etalab-2.0 etalab-2.0 | Content / data | ✗ | Unknown | 5Base Adresse Nationale, data.gouv.fr, Demandes de valeurs foncières (DVF) | French government open licence: reuse public data freely, including commercially, with attribution. |
| GFDL-1.3 GFDL-1.3-only | Content / data | ✗ | ✓ | 5GCC Manual, GNU Bash Reference Manual, GNU Coreutils Manual | Copyleft for manuals: copies and modified versions must stay under the GFDL, with history and invariant sections kept. |
| ODbL-1.0 ODbL-1.0 | Content / data | ✗ | ✓ | 5Open Food Facts database, OpenCorporates data, OpenFlights data | Share-alike for databases: you may use the data commercially, but public derivative databases must stay under the ODbL. Produced works such as maps or images only need attribution. |
| ODC-By-1.0 ODC-By-1.0 | Content / data | ✗ | Unknown | 5C4 (AllenAI release), Dolma, FineWeb | For databases and datasets: any use, including commercial, if you keep the attribution notice. Works you produce from the data need a notice too. |
| OFL-1.1 OFL-1.1 | Content / data | ✓ | ✓ | 5Fira Sans, IBM Plex, Inter | Free font license: use, embed and modify fonts freely, but modified fonts must drop reserved names, and the fonts may not be sold by themselves. |
| OGL-UK-3.0 OGL-UK-3.0 | Content / data | ✗ | Unknown | 5Companies House data, data.gov.uk, legislation.gov.uk | UK public-sector licence: use government information freely, including commercially, with attribution. |