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The Internet Compass

Open Source

Permissive License

A permissive license is an open-source license — most commonly MIT, Apache 2.0 or a BSD variant — that allows software to be used, modified and redistributed with minimal conditions, including incorporation into closed-source, proprietary products, typically requiring only that the original copyright and license notice be preserved.

Permissive licenses are now the default choice for most widely-used open-source infrastructure and libraries specifically because they impose the fewest restrictions on companies that want to build commercial products on top of them, which maximises adoption.

Apache 2.0 differs from MIT and BSD in one commercially significant way: it includes an explicit patent grant, meaning contributors license any patents they hold that are necessarily infringed by their contribution — a protection MIT and BSD licenses don't address at all.