Free software license

Generally speaking, free software license is a phrase used by the free software movement to mean any [software license]? that grants users of the software the following four freedoms:

1. The freedom to run the program for any purpose
2. The freedom to study and modify the program
3. The freedom to copy the program
4. The freedom to redistribute modified versions of the program

See Free software movement for more information.

The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of free software licenses at their web site. The list also contains licenses that are often thought of as free software licenses, but do on meet the approval of the FSF for various reasons. The list, which differs from the open source license list, can be found at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

See also:

• Free software
• Free Software Foundation
• Open source license