CeCILL
| Author | CEA, CNRS, & INRIA |
|---|---|
| Latest version | 2.1 |
| Publisher | CEA, CNRS, & INRIA |
| Published | 21 June 2013 |
| DFSG compatible | Yes |
| FSF approved | Yes |
| OSI approved | Yes (2.1 only) |
| GPL compatible | Yes |
| Copyleft | Yes |
| Linking from code with a different license | No |
CeCILL (from CEA CNRS INRIA Logiciel Libre) is a free software license adapted to both international and French legal matters, in the spirit of and retaining compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL).
It was jointly developed by a number of French agencies: the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique (Atomic Energy Commission), the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (National Centre for Scientific Research) and the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control). It was announced on 5 July 2004 in a joint press communication of the CEA, CNRS and INRIA.
It has gained support of the main French Linux User Group and the Minister of Public Function, and is now under examination to be adopted at the European level.
The CeCILL grants users the right to copy, modify, and distribute the licensed software freely. It defines the rights as passing from the copyright holder to a "Licensor", which may be the copyright holder or a further distributor, to the user or "Licensee". Like the GPL, it requires that modifications to the software be distributed under the CeCILL, but it makes no claim to work that executes in "separate address spaces", which may be licensed under terms of the licensee's choice. It does not grant a patent license (as some other common open-source licenses do), but rather includes a promise by the licensor not to enforce any patents it owns. In Article 9.4, the licensor agrees to provide "technical and legal assistance" if litigation regarding the software is brought against the licensee, though the extent of the assistance "shall be decided on a case-by-case basis...pursuant to a memorandum of understanding".
The disclaimers of warranty and liability are written in a manner different from other common open-source licenses in order to comply with French law. The CeCILL does not preclude the licensor from offering a warranty or technical support for its software, but requires that such services be negotiated in a separate agreement.
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