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Recommended copyleft licenses

This page is maintained by the Free Software Foundation's Licensing and Compliance Lab. You can support our efforts by making a donation to the FSF. Have a question not answered here? Check out some of our other licensing resources or contact the Compliance Lab at licensing@fsf.org.

This page lists the copyleft licenses that we recommend free software projects and associated documentation use.

Software licenses

Documentation licenses

To learn more about when and why we recommend these licenses, please see How to choose a license for your own work. Note that only the licenses listed above are recommended copyleft licenses; other licenses discussed in that guide are not copyleft licenses, or else suggested for use in more narrow circumstances.

Back to the GNU licenses page

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