Software Freedom Licensing: What You Must Know

Bradley M. Kuhn

Wednesday 15 April 2015

Angels Dancing on Heads of Pins


And Schibler with others, maketh the difference of extension to be this, that Angels can contract their whole substance into one part of space, and therefore have not partes extra partes. Whereupon it is that the Schoolmen have questioned how many Angels may fit upon the point of a Needle?

— Richard Baxter, The Reasons of the Christian Religion, 1667.

Licenses: Who Reads Them?

Licenses: Who Reads Them?

What the License Says Matters

Why Use This System?

Why Do We Need Licenses?

Ye Ol’ Four Freedoms

What a Free Software License Does?

How Do I Know?

Did You File Your 1040 Today?

Tax Policy

Licensing Policy

The Simplest Free Software License


Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

Does/Should a License Do More?

Basics of Copyleft Licensing

Other Policy and Rules?

Comparing Licenses



Meta-License Policy

A Final Example

Does Free Software Remain Free?

More Info / Talk License

Presentation and slides are: Copyright © 2014, 2015 Bradley M. Kuhn, and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Some images included herein are ©’ed by others. I believe my use of those images is fair use under USA © law. However, I suggest you remove such images if you redistribute these slides under CC-By-SA 4.0.