Academic Free License
Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox software license 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).
The license grants similar rights to the BSD, MIT, UoI/NCSA and Apache licensesTemplate:Snd licenses allowing the software to be made proprietaryTemplate:Snd but was written to correct perceived problems with those licenses. The AFL:
- makes clear what software is being licensed by including a statement following the software's copyright notice;
- includes a complete copyright grant to the software;
- contains a complete patent grant to the software;
- makes clear that no trademark rights are granted to the licensor's trademarks;
- warrants that the licensor either owns the copyright or is distributing the software under a license;
- is itself copyrighted, with the right granted to copy and distribute without modification.
The Free Software Foundation consider all AFL versions up to and including 3.0 as incompatible with the GNU GPL.<ref name="fsf">Template:Cite web</ref> though Eric S. Raymond (a co-founder of the OSI) contends that AFL 3.0 is GPL compatible.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In late 2002, an OSI working draft considered it a "best practice" license.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In mid-2006, however, the OSI's License Proliferation Committee found it "redundant with more popular licenses",<ref name="osi">Template:Cite web</ref> specifically version 2 of the Apache Software License.
See also
- License proliferation
- Open Software License – similar, but reciprocal license by the same author
- Software using the Academic Free License (category)
References
External links
- Text of the Academic Free License v3.0
- Allocation of the Risk by Lawrence Rosen (PDF) – reasoning behind the Academic Free License