- MIT
- Code that can be re-used, copied, distributed by others as a dependency with attribution, downstream re-used code can carry any license.
- This license is "permissive".
- You can change this license to a more strong license at a future date, as long as the permissive license is retained as a copy.
- Does not carry patent rights.
- May need a future patent agreement with the contributors to a project.
- Apache 2.0
- Code that can be re-used, copied, distributed by others with attribution.
- Carries patent rights if code is re-used and assigned a proprietary copyright.
- Inbound or outbound code is treated legally the same.
- GPLv3
- Code that can be re-used, copied, distrubuted by others with attribution, but downstream code must carry the same license (copy left)
- Enforces downstream code to carry the same strong open source license.
- Public Domain
- No copyright, free to use, with no restrictions.
All of the dependencies that you use in your code is relevant when considering which license. If some dependencies exist that carry copy left terms, then that must carry to your license.
Trademarks are allowed with open source licenses and they do not conflict. Trademarks protect logos, names etc. They do not protect code. Open source licenses do.
Reference FOSSmarks
- Content (images, videos, written word and other creative content) is not protected under the code copyrights above.
- Content can be copyrighted, while the underlying code is open source.
- If content contains code in it, you need two licenses.
- Allows for re-use.
- Must attribute.
- Can rework and modify.
- No restrictions on license of derivatives.
- Same as 4.0 but enforces derivates of your work, but also be open source and all of future derivatives of that work.
- Same as 4.0 but does not allow changes to the work.
The content of this project itself is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, and the underlying source code used to format and display that content is licensed under the MIT license.