Free license is such license agreement, which contain conditions permit to the user from the holder on a specific list of uses for his work, which gives him four major freedom (or based on them).
Without a special license these uses are prohibited by the laws of copyright.
Most of free licenses is worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and perpetual.
Free licenses often are basis of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding projects.
The invention of the term "free license" and focusing on the rights of users were connected to the traditions of the hacker culture of the 1970s and the social and political free software movement (since 1980). Since then times ideas of free licenses spreaded into different spheres of society. Open source, free culture, anticopyright, Wikimedia movements, pirate parties are connected with free licenses.
Read more about Free License: Problems
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or license:
“The American adolescent, then, is faced, as are the adolescents of all countries who have entered or are entering the machine age, with the question: freedom from what and at what price? The American feels so rich in his opportunities for free expression that he often no longer knows what it is he is free from. Neither does he know where he is not free; he does not recognize his native autocrats when he sees them.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)
“Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)