Does Open Source mean anybody else can use my name and logo?

No, at least not any more than they could otherwise. Open Source is about software source code, not about identity. That is, letting people use your code under an Open Source license is not the same as letting them use your trademarks or other identifying attributes, except insofar as they would be permitted to anyway (for example, in nominative use doctrine). There are many companies and other organizations that release open source code while exercising tight control over their trademarks.

Trademarks and other marks of attribution are primarily about preventing public confusion over identity and provenance, and therefore trademark regulation is useful in Open Source software in the same way it is useful generally.

Software released under Creative Commons "CC0" ("CC Zero") public domain dedication - Is that Open Source?

At this time, we do not recommend releasing software using the the CC0 public domain dedication.

Creative Commons Zero is a legal device known as a "public domain dedication". It is essentially a statement of intent by the copyright holder to waive copyright ownership in the work — that is, the copyright holder wishes to place the work into the public domain.

Because such a waiver is (perhaps surprisingly) not possible in all jurisdictions, CC0 also contains a "Public License Fallback" clause that goes into effect "should any part of the Waiver for any reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law". The fallback is essentially a copyright license that is very similar to an Open Source license, in that it gives up most of the restrictive powers associated with copyright, and allows redistribution and modification of the work.

In February 2012, Creative Commons submitted CC0 to the OSI for approval as an open source license, requesting that the OSI evaluate the public license fallback section, since the rest of the text is a waiver of rights rather than a license. An unexpectedly intense and detailed discussion followed — search for "CC0" and "Creative Commons Zero" in the subject headers of the February 2012 and March 2012 archives of the OSI License Review mailing list.

CC0 was not explicitly rejected, but the License Review Committee was unable to reach consensus that it should be approved, and Creative Commons eventually withdrew the application. The most serious of the concerns raised had to do with the effects of clause 4(a), which reads: "No ... patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.". While many open source licenses simply do not mention patents, it is exceedingly rare for open source licenses to explicitly disclaim any conveyance of patent rights, and the Committee felt that approving such a license would set a dangerous precedent, and possibly even weaken patent infringement defenses available to users of software released under CC0.


Software released under  "CC Zero" - Is that Open Source?

Our system is not open source but compliant to open standards. Is it a DPG?

No, unfortunately, your system is not a Digital Public Good. 

A system that is based on open protocols or standards will in most cases be a better and more preferable system compared to a system that is not, but simply basing a system or platform on an open protocol is not sufficient to define it as a digital public good. The system also needs to be released under an open source license and it needs to comply with all the 9 indicators in the standard.

Why require the source code to be under an open source license to be defined as a DPG? There are many reasons for this, I will focus on the most important ones when it comes to larger systems that are defined as infrastructure.

Let us start by drawing up a thought experiment. A technology company creates a brilliant system to handle mobile payment between individuals, companies and government. They are also working on a concept that would run elections. Let us say that their primary market is East Africa. They develop their system based on open protocols and standards but keep the source code closed because their business model is to sell the core system to governments. They are successful and sell the system to 15 countries in East and South Africa, and because they have developed the system with open protocols, they attract more than 100 companies that develop services and integrations towards their system. The interoperability and protocols also makes it possible to send payments between users in different countries. So far this looks like a success story and a fantastic example of a DPG, right?

The problem is that the core source code now runs in 15, soon to be 20 African countries, and the vendor has full control over this source code. The countries do not, they are merely tenants, paying rent. This single vendor now has full marked control and the community of small companies that are integrated are fully dependent on the core system vendor. There are many examples of how this can go terribly wrong, but let me just ask the following questions:

What is to stop this vendor from adding key features that are beyond the standards and protocols, and making those features mandatory both towards partners and customers? This will make it impossible for other core system vendors to integrate.

The Digitale Public Goods standard has a “do no harm by design” requirement. How are we to verify this, without inspecting the source code?

What is to stop this vendor from creating a backdoor, selling user information from transactions? Only the vendor can inspect the source code.

What is to prevent this vendor from raising prices for both customers and transaction cost for the partners? The exit cost for a country will be very high, and they can not ask another vendor to take over the maintenance of the code. They do not own the code.

What is to prevent the vendor from shutting a government out of the system if they do not make payments on time? If this is a core infrastructure system it would have serious consequences.

If this was not a payment system but an election system, what is to prevent the vendor from rigging the count in favour of one of the candidates? No one can inspect the source code to verify.

All of these problems are more likely to be solved in a much better way if the source code is under an open license. A country should have control over their own digital infrastructure, and be able to choose their vendor, and change the vendor if needed, without having to replace the whole infrastructure.

One single company should not be able to take control over important markeds and one single company should not have control over national critical infrastructure in any country. Systems that are defined as critical infrastructure influence a country’s digital sovereignty and having control and ownership over these types of systems will always be a minimum requirement.

Open protocols do not ensure this, open source does.

Our system is not open source but compliant to open standards. Is our system a DPG?

Is there a definition of Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials that are distributed at no cost with legal permission for the public to freely use, share, and build upon the content. 

The Hewlett Foundation defines OER as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge”

What is the purpose of the open definition?

The Open Definition, first released by Open Knowledge in 2005, sets out under what conditions data and content is open. The “standard” provided by the Open Definition is crucial because much of the value of open data lies in the ease with which different sources of open data can be combined. Both legal and technical compatibility is vital, and the Open Definition ensures that openly-licensed data can be combined successfully, avoiding a proliferation of licences and terms of use for open data leading to complexity and incompatibility. 

As governments and organisations jostle to wear the ‘open’ label, the Open Definition ensures that the term does not lose its meaning amid the hype. Today it is the main international standard for open data and open data licences, with an advisory council of senior open data practitioners and can be found at 

The expert-governed licence conformance process and recommendations for conformance have strengthened licences around the world, for example, in the revision of the UK Government’s internationally influential “Open Government Licence”. The Open Definition has also influenced and steered other communities of practice in the open movement, including open access to publicly-funded research, open hardware, and more. 

What are "contributor agreements"? Are they like open source licenses?

Many open source projects will only accept patches (code contributions or documentation contributions) from people who have submitted a legal document known as a 

 open source licenses — rather, they are a way for the contributor to tell the project that it has the right to distribute the new contributions under the project's existing open source license. (Some contributor agreements also allow for the project to distribute the contributions under other open source licenses too, which enables projects to change their license in the future, and some agreements even allow the project to distribute the contributions under 

There are two kinds of contributor agreements. In a 

, the original contributor retains copyright ownership of their contributions, but grants the project a broad set of rights such that the project can incorporate and distribute the contributions as it needs to. In a 

, the contributor actually transfers copyright ownership of the contributions to the project, who can then license it however they want since they own it (but a CAA typically grants very broad non-exclusive rights back to the contributor so that they too can use, distribute, sublicense etc their contribution freely).

With both CLAs and CAAs, it is of course necessary that "the project" be some kind of legal entity able to enter into agreements. Sometimes the project is incorporated itself, usually as a non-profit entity; sometimes it is represented by an umbrella non-profit organization (such as the 

); sometimes a for-profit corporation considers itself the main sponsor of the project and requests contributor agreements in order to manage the development community and maintain a public distribution of the software in question.

For more about contributor agreements in general, and some examples, see 

, "...a community-centered group focused on contributor agreements for free and open source software (FOSS)."

How do ‘standards collaborations' differ from ‘open source collaborations'

Standards and open source projects are different collaborations. They're different economic tools in a marketplace with different goals, outcomes, and processes:

1. Standards take longer to develop and change.

 Whereas open source projects can develop quickly, standards encourage multiple implementations and tend to enter a market with some maturity and competition. Standards and specifications don't change quickly, so they are developed with the expectation that they'll need to last for longer periods of time. For example, moving from HTML1.0 to HTML5 standard took about 18 years, and we've had TCP since 1981 with few changes.

2. Standards are consensus-based compromises.

 Open source projects are driven by contribution and meritocracy.

3. Standards define useful predictable boundaries.

 Well-run open source projects are the building blocks of rich, varied ecosystems.

How do ‘standards collaborations' differ from ‘open source collaborations'?

What is "free software" and is it the same as "open source"?

 "Free software" and "open source software" are two terms for the same thing: software released under licenses that guarantee a certain specific set of freedoms.

The term "free software" is older, and is reflected in the name of the 

 (FSF), an organization founded in 1985 to protect and promote free software. The term "open source" was coined by Christine Peterson and adopted in 1998 by the founders of the 

. Like the FSF, the OSI's founders supported the development and distribution of free software, but they disagreed with the FSF about how to promote it, believing that software freedom was primarily a practical issue rather than an ideological one (see for example the entry 

"How is `open source' related to `free software'?"

Many who later adopted the term "open source" broadly shared the ideological perspective of the FSF but had some disagreements over strategy and rhetoric. Today some people use both terms, choosing according to context and audience.

One of the tactical concerns often cited by adopters of the term "open source" was the ambiguity of the English word "free", which can refer either to freedom or to mere monetary price; this ambiguity was also given by the OSI founders as a reason to prefer the new term (see 

 page, both from the original 1998 web site).

In the 1990s, the term "open" applied to software source code was sometimes used to imply source code being merely inspectable or visible or available. Going back further, in the 1980s there were uses of "open" in the computing industry that primarily connoted something like "absence of hardware vendor lockin". OSI's term "open source", as defined in the Open Source Definition, makes clear that open source specifically entails not mere inspection access but also conveying to recipients the perpetual right to fork covered code and use it without additional fees.

 of software freedom when evaluating licenses, while the OSI uses a longer, 

. The two definitions lead to the same result in practice, but use superficially different language to get there.

This history has led to occasional confusion about the relationship between the two terms. Sometimes people mistakenly assume that users of the term "open source" do not intend to communicate a philosophical point of view via that term, even though many actually do use it that way. Another mistake, which has occasionally been seen since about 2008, is to assume that "free software" refers only to software licensed under 

 licenses, since that is how the FSF typically releases software, while "open source" refers to software released under so-called 

 (i.e., non-copyleft) licenses. In fact, 

Neither term binds exclusively to one set of associations or another, however; it is always question of context and intended audience. When you sense a potential misunderstanding, you may wish to reassure your audience that the terms are essentially interchangeable, except when being used specifically to discuss the history or connotations of the terminological difference itself. Some people also prefer to use the term "free and open source software" (or FOSS, FLOSS [free, libre and open source software]) for this reason.

Can I write proprietary code that links to a shared library that's open source?

Sometimes you can; it depends on the Open Source license. Authors often want you to be able to do this, so most shared libraries are licensed under a permissive license or one that allows linking under certain circumstances (e.g., the LGPL). 

A very small number of libraries use the GPL, which only allows linking with proprietary works if the licensor grants an explicit exception. Thus, you are wise to check the licenses that your program links to. The community expects that all code linked to GPL code will be licensed under the GPL, even if the link is made at runtime using a shared library.

What is a "permissive" Open Source license?

 A "permissive" license is simply a non-copyleft open source license — one that guarantees the freedoms to use, modify, and redistribute, but that permits proprietary derivative works. 

How do open standards advocates define 'open standards'?

Answer: There are a few different takes on this question.

 (OSI), the organization responsible for reviewing and approving licenses as Open Source Definition (OSD) conformant, says "an ‘open standard' must not prohibit conforming implementations in open source software." OSI provides a list of five criteria an open standard must satisfy. "If an ‘open standard' does not meet these criteria, it will be discriminating against open source developers," the site says:

No Intentional Secrets: The standard must not withhold any detail necessary for interoperable implementation. As flaws are inevitable, the standard must define a process for fixing flaws identified during implementation and interoperability testing and to incorporate said changes into a revised version or superseding version of the standard to be released under terms that do not violate the OSR.

Availability: The standard must be freely and publicly available (e.g., from a stable web site) under royalty-free terms at reasonable and non-discriminatory cost.

Patents: All patents essential to implementation of the standard must:

be licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, or

be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software

No Agreements: There must not be any requirement for execution of a license agreement, NDA, grant, click-through, or any other form of paperwork to deploy conforming implementations of the standard.

No OSR-Incompatible Dependencies: Implementation of the standard must not require any other technology that fails to meet the criteria of this Requirement.

 collaborated with other individuals and organizations in the tech industry, politics, and community to outline a different five-point definition. According to the FSFE, an open standard refers to a format or protocol that is:

subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties;

without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves;

free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model;

managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;

available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.

What is "copyleft"? Is it the same as "open source"?

"Copyleft" refers to licenses that allow derivative works but require them to use the same license as the original work. For example, if you write some software and release it under the GNU General Public License (a widely-used copyleft license), and then someone else modifies that software and distributes their modified version, the modified version must be licensed under the GNU GPL too — including any new code written specifically to go into the modified version. Both the original and the new work are Open Source; the copyleft license simply ensures that property is perpetuated to all downstream derivatives. (There is at least one copyleft license, the Affero GPL, that even requires you to offer the source code, under the AGPL, to anyone to whom you make the software's functionality available as a network service — however, most copyleft licenses activate their share-and-share-alike requirement on distribution of a copy of the software itself. You should read the license to understand its requirements for source code distribution.)

Most copyleft licenses are Open Source, but not all Open Source licenses are copyleft. When an Open Source license is not copyleft, that means software released under that license can be used as part of programs distributed under other licenses, including proprietary (non-open-source) licenses. For example, the BSD license is a non-copyleft Open Source license. Such licenses are usually called either "non-copyleft" or "permissive" open source licenses

Copyleft provisions apply only to actual derivatives, that is, cases where an existing copylefted work was modified. Merely distributing a copyleft work alongside a non-copyleft work does not cause the latter to fall under the copyleft terms.

What is an open file format and why is it different from a proprietary file format?

An open file format is a file format with no restrictions, monetary or otherwise, placed upon its use and can be fully processed with at least one free/libre/open-source software tool.

Patents are a common source of restrictions that make a format proprietary. Often, but not necessarily, the structure of an open format is set out in agreed standards, overseen and published by a non-commercial expert body. A file in an open format enjoys the guarantee that it can be correctly read by a range of different software programs or used to pass information between them.

Can I restrict how people use an Open Source licensed program?

No. The freedom to use the program for any purpose is part of the Open Source Definition. Open source licenses do not discriminate against fields of endeavor.

What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

 Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

Will The Open Database License (ODbL) create legal uncertainty? 

: in order to have total legal certainty all you need to do is comply with the terms of the ODbL (in particular the share-alike requirement).

As a Licensor using the ODbL for your own material

: as explained in the previous FAQ it is possible that in some jurisdictions there will be uncertainty as to whether there are sufficient underlying “rights” for the ODbL (or any other license) to have effect. However:

The ODbL will apply in many jurisdictions (either via “rights” or contract).

Where there is any uncertainty about the existence of “rights” or a contract no other approach can do any better and at worst this license becomes a very clear statement of your “community norms”.

Will the Open Database License (ODbL) create legal uncertainty? 

Data is open if it can be freely accessed, used, modified and shared by anyone for any purpose - subject only, at most, to requirements to provide attribution and/or 

. Specifically, open data is defined by the 

: that is, available under an open (data) license that permits anyone freely to access, reuse and redistribute 

: that is, that the data be available for no more than the cost of reproduction and in 

What is open data?

What about software in the "public domain"? Is that Open Source?

For most practical purposes, it is — sort of. This is a complicated question, so please read on.

"Public domain" is a technical term in copyright law that refers to works not under copyright — either because they were never in copyright to begin with (for example, works authored by U.S. government employees, on government time and as part of their job, are automatically in the public domain), or because their copyright term has finally lapsed and they have "fallen into" the public domain.

Not all jurisdictions have a public domain, and it doesn't always mean exactly the same thing in the jurisdictions that do have it. Furthermore, even where it is clear what it means, it's still not a license. To be subject to a license, a work must still be in copyright. That means there is no way for the "public domain", as a concept, to go through the OSI evaluation and approval process. We wouldn't be evaluating a license text. Instead, we would have to somehow evaluate the laws themselves, in different jurisdictions, and say which jurisdictions have a public domain that meets the Open Source Definition and does not create problems for software authors and users. This would be very difficult, because it would mean evaluating not just the statutes but various bodies of case law (for example, open source licenses usually have a strong disclaimer of liability for the copyright holder — but we don't know how or whether the author would be protected from liability for software released into the public domain in various jurisdictions). This approach would not be useful to the OSI's mission, because open source is an international phenomenon and we only want to approve licenses that meet the Open Source Definition everywhere.

Thus we recommend that you always apply an approved Open Source license to software you are releasing, rather than try to waive copyright altogether. Using a clear, recognized Open Source license actually makes it easier for others to know that your software meets the Open Source Definition. It also enables the protection of attribution, and various other non-restrictive rights, that cannot be reliably enforced when there is no license.

There are certain circumstances, such as with U.S. government works as described above, where it is not easy to apply a license, and the software must be released into the public domain. In these cases, while it would be inaccurate to display the OSI logo or say that the license is OSI-approved (since there is no license), nevertheless we think it is accurate to say that such software is effectively open source, or open source for most practical purposes, even though it is not officially released under an open source license. (This is assuming, of course, that in the laws of releasing jurisdiction the meaning of "public domain" is compatible with the Open Source Definition.) After all, the freedoms guaranteed by open source licenses are still present, and it is possible for the familiar dynamics of open source collaboration to arise around the software.

Our organisation is planning to share some of our datasets. What license to we choose?

For open data, we advice the use of an Open Data Commons approved license. This will ensure that your data is candidate to becomming a Digitale Public Goods. See The full license list at link below for reference to pick your license.

Our organisation is planning to share some of our data as open data. What license to we choose? 

Can Open Source software be used for commercial purposes?

Absolutely. All Open Source software can be used for commercial purpose; the Open Source Definition guarantees this. You can even sell Open Source software. However, note that commercial is not the same as proprietary. 

If you receive software under an Open Source license, you can always use that software for commercial purposes, but that doesn't always mean you can place further restrictions on people who receive the software from you. In particular, copyleft-style Open Source licenses require that, in at least some cases, when you distribute the software, you must do so under the same license you received it under.

Can I call my program "Open Source" even if I don't use an approved license?

Without the right license, it's not really open source so we would ask you to not do that. If you call it "Open Source" without using an approved license, you will confuse people. 

This is not merely a theoretical concern — we have seen this confusion happen in the past, and it's part of the reason why there is a formal license approval process. See also the OSI page on license proliferation for why this is a problem. An effective open source license is one which allows for broad use, modification, and sharing of the code, without onerous restrictions. 

Ambiguous or vague licenses that don't explicitly grant the rights protected by copyright are problematic because they're open to interpretation. Additionally, if you're not absolutely certain you can comply with the obligations of a software license, you probably shouldn't use the software. If there is ever a legal challenge, you don't want to have to worry about the outcome. 

The most popular licences are the MIT, GPL, and Apache. The best way to avoid wondering if a particular license is safe to use is to choose one of these generally accepted licenses. They've undergone rigorous review by the open source legal community.

Open Source simply because it's written in

No. While languages like PHP, Perl or Python have implementations that are licensed under Open Source licenses, that doesn't turn all code written in these languages or run under such implementations into Open Source. The code written in such languages or run under such implementations would need to be licensed under an approved Open Source license in order to be Open Source.

Is <SOME PROGRAM> Open Source simply because it's written in <SOME OPEN SOURCE LICENSED LANGUAGE>?

This question isn't actually specific to open source licenses — it's really just about how to apply some particular copyright license (whether open source or not) to your software. Please note that the OSI is not a legal services organization and does not provide legal advice. However, many licenses come with instructions on how to apply them: for example, see the section "APPENDIX: How to apply the Apache License to your work" in the Apache-2.0 license, or the section "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs" in the GPL-3.0 license. If the license you want to apply has such instructions, just follow them. If it does not, then look at the previous two examples (or at other licenses that contain similar instructions) and follow a similar recipe, adjusting for the license you're actually using of course. The Software Freedom Law Center also maintains a guide on managing copyright information within open source projects. Finally, this guide may also help, though please note again that neither it nor this FAQ item constitutes legal advice.

Note that releasing software under an open source license does not involve contacting the OSI, signing up to some process, or handing a copy of your software to the OSI or any other organization for evaluation. You just publish the software with an OSI-approved open source license attached, in the manner described above — that's all you need to do.

How do I apply <SOME OPEN SOURCE LICENSE> to software I'm releasing?

Are there any "ethical" open source licenses?

No, there are no licenses covering ethical issues in the list of licenses that are approved by the Open Source Initiative. 

There are a few licenses in early stages development developing ethical licenses. The organisation Ethical Source has a list of these: https://ethicalsource.dev/licenses/

Does open source mean “free of charge”?

One of open source’s biggest draws is that it does not cost money. “Free of charge”, however, is a byproduct of open source’s overall value.

Because an open source license requires that anyone can use, modify, and share your project for nearly any purpose, projects themselves tend to be free of charge. If the project cost money to use, anyone could legally make a copy and use the free version instead.

As a result, most open source projects are free, but “free of charge” is not part of the open source definition. There are ways to charge for open source projects indirectly through dual licensing or limited features, while still complying with the official definition of open source.

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