GNU General Public License

All CIG hosted software is released through an open source software license. CIG will consider open source licenses that are free for non-commercial use but prefers the GNU General Public License. For more information on open source licensing see the Open Source Inititative.

The GNU GPL has two versions that are actively used in many open source communities:

GNU GPLv2 (June 1991)
GNU GPLv3 (June 2007)

GPLv3 addresses issues that were not sufficiently covered in GPLv2 including license compatability and digital rights management; contains an explicit patent;and states that there is no requirement to disclose source code in an ASP use. Most software in the CIG repository is released under GPLv2. Please consult each software page for specific licensing information. Note that version 1.0 is not recommended for use.

For more information see OSI GNU GPL and gnu.org.

Information on implementation can be found here.

Other Licenses

CIG codes also use the following licenses:

Other Resources

Introduction to Software Licensing (2018-12-05) [IDEAS Productivity]
Presenter: David E. Bernholdt, ORNL
Archives: Slides (PDF @ FigShare) | Video (YouTube) | Q&A (PDF)