Permissive vs CopyLeft

• Permissive:

  • BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution)
  • MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
    • Characteristics: Grants broad rights to modify and redistribute with minimal restrictions, typically requiring only the preservation of copyright notices and warranty disclaimers. You are not legally obligated to distribute the source code of derivative works.

• Copyleft:

  • GPL (GNU General Public License)
    • Characteristics: Enforces license reciprocity. If you distribute a derivative work of a copyleft-licensed project, you must license the entire derivative work under the identical terms. Consequently, recipients of the distributed software (i.e., your customers, it doesn't have to be everyone) must be provided access to the corresponding source code.