Software Licensing

Warunajith Bandara
3 min readAug 3, 2021

In the first several decades after World War 2, modern computing was developing and there was no software licensing concept. Because almost all the Software codes were openly shared and freely redistributed. When it Came to the 1980’s People were thinking about software as intellectual proprietary. IBM became the first large organization to release the codes only in closed-source form. This is the beginning of the software licensing concept.

What is a software license?

A software license is a document that provides legally binding guidelines for the use and distribution of software. It typically provides end-users with the right to one or more copies of the software without violating copyrights. The license also spells out the duties of the parties involved in the agreement, as well as any limitations on how the program can be used.

Types of Software Licenses

There are numerous sorts of software licenses, and disobedience with a license can result in serious consequences. Mainly, 5 software license categories are used to cover different kinds of software and various business arrangements.

1. Public Domain License

In the public domain license, anyone is free to use and modify the software without restrictions. Public domain software may not always follow acceptable coding methods or meet the security criteria that the application demands. It is not necessarily true that software that does not come under specified licensing terms is public domain code. Before copying, reusing, or distributing software, be sure it’s actually public domain.

2.LGPL License

LGPL License is referred to as Lesser General Public License. Under this type of license, developers have the right to link to open source libraries within their own software.

3.Permissive License

A permissive software license, often known as a BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free software license with few restrictions on how it can be used, modified, or redistributed, and usually includes a warranty disclaimer.

4.Copyleft

The concept of allowing the ability to freely distribute and alter intellectual property in exchange for the same rights being preserved in derivative works developed from that property is known as copyleft.

5.Proprietary License

Non-free software, often known as proprietary software, or closed-source software and It is computer software for which the publisher or another person maintains some rights from licenses to use, edit, share modifications, or share the software.

What is Copyright Law?

Copyright law is a type of intellectual property law that protects creative works, which can include things like plays, movies, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, songs, letters, and many other things. The application of copyright law to machine-readable software is known as software copyright. While many of the legal principles and policy arguments surrounding software copyright are similar to those in other areas of copyright law, the software has its own set of challenges.

Ownership vs Licensing

Having full ownership means you have complete freedom to do whatever you want with the software and code. The full rights to the work have been given to you by the original creator. Licensing is the owner of the software’s authorization to do specific actions with it, as specified in the license agreement.

Usage of Licensing

Software licenses spell out the terms of the licensor’s and licensee’s whole agreement. The purpose is to clarify the relationship from a legal and technological standpoint so that there are no surprises or guesswork about responsibilities while the agreement is in effect. The cost of a software license varies greatly based on the type of software, how it is delivered, and the cost of development for the supplier.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license

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Warunajith Bandara

Software Engineering Undergraduate at University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka