The Free World Licence

Welcome To The Free World!

The Free World Licence is a free software licence that is functionally similar to the GNU General Public Licence (GNU GPL), but allows use only on free operating systems (platforms) such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and the GNU HURD (the "Free Software World"). Software released under The Free World Licence cannot be used (under the licence) on proprietary platforms such as Windows NT and Solaris.

The purpose of The Free World Licence is to provide a means for commercial software vendors to contribute their software to the free software community and experiment with free software business models without threatening the proprietary-platform sales that underwrite their survival. The licence achieves this by restricting use of the software to free platforms only, a mechanism that is largely successful in separating hackers from suits because of the almost-exclusive use of free platforms by the free software community and the extremely high use of proprietary platforms by the corporate community.

When you release your commercial software under the Free World Licence, everyone benefits. The free software community receives some new software which it can freely distribute and modify (on free platforms only), you can experiment with free software business models on free platforms without threatening your revenue base, and your customers benefit from the increased user base and the improved quality yielded by "many eyeballs" bugfixes.

This web contains the canonical plain text version of the licence along with a comprehensive annotated version and various supporting pages including an FAQ. The latest version of the licence is Version 1. Although the licence was primarily designed for the release of my FreeVeracity software, I took special care to design the licence for use by others too. I hope you find it useful.

Ross N. Williams
ross@ross.net
Adelaide, Australia, August 2000.

The Free World Licence V1 (Plain Text)

The Free World Licence V1 (Annotated)

Frequently Asked Questions

Free And Non-Free Platforms

Developer And Distributor Checklists

Software Released Under The Licence

Denounced by Richard Stallman!

Rejected by Eric Raymond!

Other Free Software Licences