License





A license (sometimes licence), is a document or agreement giving permission
to do something. The spelling license is usual in American English. In
British English, licence is the noun form, and to license is the verb, so a
when a licensee has a licence, they are licensed. In Canadian English, the
spellings denote different meanings (eg: a licence to drive would refer to a
legal permission, whereas a license to drive could refer to a permission of
circumstance).

In law, the document is the evidence of a license to be distinguished from
the the underlying license which is the actual permission to an act in a way
that would be otherwise unlawful. Originally in reference to property, a
license was the right of an individual to enter upon the property of another
to do an act that would have otherwise been considered illegal such as
walking in the woods, hunting game or swimming in the lake. To be
distinguished from a license coupled with an interest which is an
irrevocable license that granted some interest in land or in a chattel. Such
a license could be enforced with an injunction. Licenses can be gratuitious,
revokable at will (sometimes called a bare license) or a type of bailment.
Licenses are most often thought of as in reference to End User Licence
Agreements (EULA) that are either proprietary and created as the result of a
contract of sale or gratuitous as in open source software.

The holder of a copyright may (and often does) require that a license be
accepted as a condition of being allowed to reproduce the copyrighted work.

This is common in commercial computer software. Unlike most goods, but like
other intellectual property (such as books, movies, and music), computer
software is generally regarded as being licensed, not bought. (The person
who purchases a book normally owns the atoms, but not the text.) This means
that the licensee has fewer rights than someone who has purchased the
underlying creative work. (A publisher who buys a book (the text) may
typically republish it under a new title, but a consumer who buys a book
(the atoms) may not.)

Software licenses are often highly restrictive, and most software users do
not bother to read them in full. So-called "shrink-wrap" licences and
"click-through" licences are common. Most limit the number of computers the
software can be installed on, the number of users that can use the software,
and apply other limitations that are not inherent in the technology. As a
result, huge fortunes have been made by selling goods that have a minimal
cost of reproduction on a per-item basis.

So-called free software licenses and open source licenses are a reaction to
what many see as the unfair restrictions of commercial software licenses.