In this whitepaper, Michael Barr of Embedded Systems Programming provides an overview of the broad assortment of “open source” licenses (and nonlicenses) that are in use today, and sheds some light on their differences and subtleties. Barr discusses: proprietary software, shareware, free software, public domain software, GPL, LGPL, open source, and community source. Barr writes . . .

“One of the more confusing aspects of the open source phenomenon is the proliferation of different source code licensing schemes. If you are considering using software developed by others within your products, you'll probably want to have an intellectual property lawyer read the individual license agreements in detail and summarize your rights. However, this quick guide to the licensing terminology should be enough to get you started.”

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