There are many free software licenses available these days, from viral and stringent licenses like GPL, with some grey and confusing like LGPL to business friendly licenses like ASL and X11. All of these licenses are “open source”, which means the software source is also available to public along with its binaries. Which is great for open source and I personally like ASL among the lot and tend to use it for most of my open source software. But sometimes you might feel that these licenses are not “free” enough, and pack tons of terms and conditions in a pretty complicated language. There should be a software specific license which doesn’t restrict the user in anyway and allows to freely use, modify and distribute the software in any way the user likes. And the derived work should be allowed for both commercial and personal use, with or without a charge.
Now with the above situation in mind and as a developer of free software, here is my attempt to create a re-usable free software license. Lets call it, for obvious reasons, The Free Software License (TFSL). I must also mention that this license is inspired from GPL, ASL and WTF licenses and I have borrowed a few things from them. This license is also DRM-free and is composed of the following three important things:
- Terms of use
- Warranty
- Liability
I think these three things explain fully how the software should be used and also protects the developer/vendor from any damages inured from the use of the software. This license also makes sure that the software, licensed under TFSL, is distributed for free.
THE FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE
Version 1, April 2011Copyright (C) 2011 Kamran Zafar <kamran@kamranzafar.org>
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing is allowed as long as the name is changed.
THE FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, MODIFICATION, REPRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION0. You can use, modify, reproduce and distribute the software and any of its components in any way you want.
1. The software is available on “AS IS” basis and comes with absolutely NO warranty, either express or implied, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
2. In any event and under any legal theory, the copyright owner of the software will NOT be liable for any direct or in-direct damages incurred by the existence or the use of the software.
This “free software license” is available for free and can be used by any software vendor to distribute software as long as it meets the terms and conditions outlined in it’s text. In order to apply this license to the software, each source file of the software MUST contain the following wording.
Copyright [year] [name of copyright owner]
This program is a free software and comes with absolutely no warranty. You can use, modify, reproduce and distribute this software under the terms and conditions of The Free Software License.
You can obtain the copy of The Free Software License at
http://kamranzafar.org/licenses/tfsl.txt
Now like I said, it is just an attempt to create such a free software license and I am sure this is not perfect but it can be modified as per vendor requirements. This license is also available for download here.
