Malaysian Open Source Centre

If not otherwise specified, the software on this website falls under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.

Similar to other Open Source licenses, this means that you can copy, modify, and redistribute the software without restrictions, as long as the recipient receives the same license.

The Free Software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.The provisions of the GNU General Public License shall always apply.

The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project. The GPL is the most popular and well-known example of the type of strong copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft. Under this philosophy, the GPL is said to grant the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licences, of which the BSD license are the standard examples.

Open source licenses define the privileges and restrictions a licensor must follow in order to use, modify or redistribute the open source software. Open source software includes software with source code in the public domain and software distributed under an open source license.

Examples of open source licenses include Apache License, BSD license, GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, MIT License, Eclipse Public License and Mozilla Public License.

The proliferation of open source licenses is one of the few negative aspects of the open source movement because it is often difficult to understand the legal implications of the differences between licenses.

An important legal milestone for the open source movement was passed in 2008, when the US federal appeals court ruled that free software licences definitely do set legally binding conditions on the use of copyrighted work, and they are therefore enforceable under existing copyright law. As a result, if end-users do violate the licensing conditions, their licence disappears, meaning they are infringing copyright