 NASA logo | |
| Author | NASA |
|---|---|
| Latest version | 1.3 |
| Publisher | NASA |
| Published | ? |
| SPDX identifier | NASA-1.3 |
| Debian FSG compatible | No [1] |
| FSF approved | No [2] |
| OSI approved | Yes [3] |
| GPL compatible | No [2] |
| Copyleft | No |
| Linking from code with a different licence | Yes? |
| Website | ti |
The NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) is an OSI-approved software license. The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) releases some software (such as NASA World Wind and FRET) under this license.
Publication of open source software fits in with Agency functions outlined under the National Aeronautics and Space Act, that is, to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof." [4]
The NOSA was a point of discussion for NASA's Open Source Summit in March 2011. [5]
NOSA 1.3 has been approved as an open source license by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). [6] The Free Software Foundation, however, raises issue with the following clause:
G. Each Contributor represents that its Modification is believed to be Contributor's original creation and does not violate any existing agreements, regulations, statutes or rules, and further that Contributor has sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this Agreement.
The FSF states that "free software development depends on combining code from third parties", and because of this requirement that changes must be "original creation" the license is not a free software licence. [2]
In 2018 a consensus study report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine acknowledged that uncertainties about the interpretation of the license served as "a barrier to contributing to NOSA-licensed software." [7]
The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license compatibility.
Open-source licenses facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source software licenses use existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant freedoms to promote sharing or collaboration. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These licenses target computer software. Open-source licenses can also cover hardware, infrastructure, drinks, books, and music.
The Academic Free License (AFL) is a permissive free software license written in 2002 by Lawrence E. Rosen, a former general counsel of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software.
The Apple Public Source License (APSL) is the open-source and free software license under which Apple's Darwin operating system was released in 2000. A free and open-source software license was voluntarily adopted to further involve the community from which much of Darwin originated.
Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called open-source. The licenses associated with the offerings range from allowing code to be viewed for reference to allowing code to be modified and redistributed for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.
The Sleepycat License is a copyleft free software license used by Oracle Corporation for the open-source editions of Berkeley DB, Berkeley DB Java Edition and Berkeley DB XML embedded database products older than version 6.0.20.
Alternative terms for free software, such as open source, FOSS, and FLOSS, have been a controversial issue among free and open-source software users from the late 1990s onwards. These terms share almost identical licence criteria and development practices.
The Eclipse Public License (EPL) is a free and open source software license most notably used for the Eclipse IDE and other projects by the Eclipse Foundation. It replaces the Common Public License (CPL) and removes certain terms relating to litigations related to patents.
The Python Software Foundation License (PSFL) is a BSD-style, permissive software license which is compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL). Its primary use is for distribution of the Python project software and its documentation. Since the license is permissive, it allows proprietization of the derivations. The PSFL is listed as approved on both FSF's approved licenses list, and OSI's approved licenses list.
The BitTorrent Open Source License, is derived from the Jabber Open Source License, which is an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license. Former versions of the BitTorrent client and related pieces of software are licensed under this License.
This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.
Public-domain-equivalent license are licenses that grant public-domain-like rights and/or act as waivers. They are used to make copyrighted works usable by anyone without conditions, while avoiding the complexities of attribution or license compatibility that occur with other licenses.
The European Union Public Licence (EUPL) is a free software licence that was written and approved by the European Commission. The licence is available in 23 official languages of the European Union. All linguistic versions have the same validity. Its latest version, EUPL v1.2, was published in May 2017. Revised documentation for v1.2 was issued in late‑2021.
License proliferation is the phenomenon of an abundance of already existing and the continued creation of new software licenses for software and software packages in the FOSS ecosystem. License proliferation affects the whole FOSS ecosystem negatively by the burden of increasingly complex license selection, license interaction, and license compatibility considerations.
The GNU Affero General Public License is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the Affero General Public License.
A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license.
A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms.
The Shared Source Initiative (SSI) is a source-available software licensing scheme launched by Microsoft in May 2001. The program includes a spectrum of technologies and licenses, and most of its source code offerings are available for download after eligibility criteria are met.
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.