The Parity Public License
Parity is a public LICENSE for open software that requires users who build with your software to share their work with the community, too. In other words, Parity makes your work free for open source, like GitHub, Travis CI, and other current-generation services.
Parity is a flipped form in everyday English. If something doesn't make sense, that's Parity's fault, not yours. Please open an issue on GitHub so we can fix it.
User Group and Releases
If you're using Parity for a project:
Open an issue or pull request on the repository for paritylicense.com to feature your project.
Watch new releases from the GitHub repository for the license.
Why?
You might choose Parity because you're a pragmatic idealist looking for a copyleft license that's evolved with the times.
You might choose Parity because you're realistic about the need for financial support for your work, and want to sell licenses to users who won't give back in kind.
You might choose Parity because it's particularly important to make sure your users can understand your license.
Comparing
Parity improves on previous strong-copyleft licenses in several ways.
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Parity makes an effective share-alike deal with users of your software, whether your software happens to be a library, a developer tool, or a complete application. The ASP, private-changes, and developer-tools loopholes in licenses like GPL and AGPL have all been closed.
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Parity is written to be read, in plain language, with a simple "here's your permission, and here are the rules" structure. The whole text of the license fits on a single piece of paper, with lots of room to spare.
Like other share-alike licenses, Parity differs from MIT, BSD, Apache 2.0, and other pure-permissive licenses by requiring users to share software back to the community.
Family
Parity is one member of a family of licenses published by Artless Devices LLC for licensezero.com:
- Parity, a strong reciprocal license
- Charity, a permissive license
- Prosperity, a noncommercial license