Choose a license

If in doubt, use the AGPLv3 🚀

The GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 (AGPL v3) is a very good choice for research software. This strong Copyleft license can be applied to most programs that incorporate third-party code under Open Source licenses (see Figure 1). The AGPL v3 fosters, more than any other license, the sustainable availability of the source code of your work as well as that of future derivatives, improvements and adaptions. Therefore it is best suited to support Open Science, reproducibility and transparency.

Figure 1: Graph showing the compatibility-relationships between selected Open Source licenses. For details, see Wheeler, 2017. Figure obtained ibid. under the Creative Commons “Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Note

Situations where you might not want to use the AGPL include:

• cooperation-projects with private companies
• when most of the code in your field is licensed under a permissive license

For more information, have a look at the description of Copyleft licenses

Types of Open Source licenses

There are three broad categories of Open Source license type that can be applied to research software. The AGPLv3 is an example for a “Copyleft license”. This type of license ensures that a program is free software and requires all modified and extended versions of the program to be free software as well. Other types of licenses suited for research software are “permissive licenses” and a “copyright waiver” that places your work in the public domain.

Explore the different license types and see how to to apply them to your code:

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  Copyleft licenses

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  Permissive licenses

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  Public Domain

• Proprietary licenses

• Unpublished software