The University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License, or UIUC license, is a
permissive free software license, based on the
MIT/X11 license and the
3-clause BSD license
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...
. By combining parts of these two licenses, it attempts to be clearer and more concise than either.
The license is the result of efforts by a
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...
committee set up in 2001. The intention was to create a new license standard for both
NCSA and the worldwide software community in general. It was formally certified as an
open-source license
An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial compa ...
during a March 28, 2002 board meeting of the
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...
.
Source code under the NCSA license can be incorporated into proprietary products without the reciprocity requirements that
copyleft
Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose ...
free software licenses
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 (usually the author) ...
raise. The license is
compatible
Compatibility may refer to:
Computing
* Backward compatibility, in which newer devices can understand data generated by older devices
* Compatibility card, an expansion card for hardware emulation of another device
* Compatibility layer, compo ...
with all versions of the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
.
Notable software using the license includes
LLVM
LLVM is a set of compiler and toolchain technologies that can be used to develop a front end for any programming language and a back end for any instruction set architecture. LLVM is designed around a language-independent intermediate repre ...
and
Clang
Clang is a compiler front end for the C, C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++ programming languages, as well as the OpenMP, OpenCL, RenderScript, CUDA, and HIP frameworks. It acts as a drop-in replacement for the GNU Compiler Collection ...
(version 8.0.1 or earlier
).
Terms
The following is a license template. On an actual license the sections within angle brackets (year, owner organization name, etc.) will be filled out.
Copyright (c) . All rights reserved.
Developed by:
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal with
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to
do so, subject to the following conditions:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimers.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimers in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the names of , ,
nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this Software without specific prior written permission.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
CONTRIBUTORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS WITH THE
SOFTWARE.
Comparison to other licenses
The University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License is template-based, like the MIT/X11 and BSD licenses.
The initial license grant is based on text from the MIT license; it clearly states that it applies to the software plus any associated documentation files, and is more specific about what rights are conveyed than the BSD license.
The three license clauses are almost identical to those found in the modified BSD license. It requires that redistributions reproduce the license, and prevents the names of contributors from being used to promote derived products without permission. Here it is more precise than the MIT license, which does not distinguish between redistributions in source code or object form.
The University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License inspired
Lawrence Rosen of the Open Source Initiative to create the
Academic Free 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 Apach ...
. The Academic Free License is more complex than the BSD, MIT and NCSA licenses, and covers additional areas such as patent and trademark law.
See also
*
Software using the NCSA license (category)
References
External links
University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License templateIllinois Open Source License– Office of Technology Management
{{DEFAULTSORT:University Of Illinois Ncsa Open Source License
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Free and open-source software licenses
Permissive software licenses