Lesson plan
multi-licensing
Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses used, e.g. dual-licensed for software licensed under two different licenses. When software is multi-licensed, recipients can typically choose the terms under which they want to use or distribute the software, but the simple presence of multiple licenses in a software package or library does not necessarily indicate that the recipient can freely choose one or the other. In some cases, especially when the software has multiple origins, all the accompanied licenses apply at the same time. The applicability of the different licenses has to be individually checked. The distributor may or may not apply a fee to either option. The two usual motivations for multi-licensing are license compatibility and market segregation based business models.
Article summary
Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses used, e.g. dual-licensed for software licensed under two different licenses. When software is multi-licensed, recipients can typically choose the terms under which they want to use or distribute the software, but the simple presence of multiple licenses in a software package or library does not necessarily indicate that the recipient can freely choose one or the other. In some cases, especially when the software has multiple origins, all the accompanied licenses apply at the same time. The applicability of the different licenses has to be individually checked. The distributor may or may not apply a fee to either option. The two usual motivations for multi-licensing are license compatibility and market segregation based business models.
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
No sources recorded.
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.