Is an waqf (charitable trust/endowment) based, business friendly, permissive license with:
- Adapted from the original Waqf General License and Apache 2.0 licence
- Modified to tailor for Business and Service Providers
- Developed for the accelerated advances in Cloud Computing, CyberSecurity and AI.
The goal of the Waqf based license is to apply and utilize the Islamic value of Waqf and its impact on general prosperity of the recepients, and the community to open source projects, and to present an alternative intent to open sourcing a project.
هى رخصة وقفية، مجيزة، وموجهة للشركات
- معدلة من رخصة وقف العامة
- معدلة لمتطلبات الأعمال والشركات الخدمية
- مطورة لتوائم التطور فى الخدمات السحابية والأمن السيبرانى والذكاء الاصطناعى
تهدف الرخص الوقفية إالى ان تستعمل مبدأ الوقف الاسلامى وقيمته السامية وتأثيره على المجتمع وتنميه الثروات وتحقيق الرخاء على المستفيدين من المبرمجيات مفتوحة المصدر. وأن تكون بديلا عن الرخص العامه التى نشأت من مؤسسات بحثية، وأن توفر دافع دينى غير دنيوى لفتح المصدر وتحقيق المنفعة العامة.
| Permissions | Conditions | Limitations | |
| A permissive license that preserves licensed intangible assets (code, patents and trademarks) use under conditions. But allows modifications, and larger works to be distributed under different terms and without source code. |
✅ Commercial use ✅ Distribution ✅ Network Distribution or SaaS ✅ Modification ✅ Patent use ✅ Private use |
❗ License and copyright notice ❗ State changes |
❌ Liability ❌ Trademark use ❌ Warranty |
- Arabic Version
- English Version - In Progress
| Copyleft | Permissive | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Area | GPL | AGPL | Waqf/GL* | MPL | Waqf/SL* | Apache | MIT | BSD |
| Permissions | ||||||||
| Commercial use, Distribution, Modification, Private use | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Patent use | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Conditions | ||||||||
| Discolse Source | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ⚪ | ⚪ | ⚪ | ⚪ |
| License & Copyright Notice | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Network use is distribution | ⚪ | ✅ | ⚪ | ⚪ | ✅ | ⚪ | ⚪ | ⚪ |
| Same License | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ File | ⚪ | ⚪ | ⚪ | ⚪ |
| State changes | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ⚪ | ✅ | ✅ | ⚪ | ⚪ |
| Limitations | ||||||||
| Liability & Warranty | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Trademark use | - | - | - | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
- Open Soruce License: Types and Comparison
- Choose a license
- Choose a licence: Open Source License Comparison Grid
We beleive that Waqf-GL was build by individuals for individuals, not for businesses that have assets to protect and commercial drivers. Which makes it very hard to adopt or to reason about in a business context. Similary we have seen the wide-adoption of more permissive licences like Apache and MIT (at the time of writing in 2024), over the adoption of copyleft licences like GPL.
Also wheneve a business uses Open-core (MIT core), it is quickly faced with over-exploitation of trademarks, closed source drivatives by much larger corportations (Elastic and Mongo vs Amazon AWS, Wordpress vs WPEngine). so they revert quickly to the AGPL or another more copyleft, overly restrictive licence, and the small business are the only ones that suffer.
So we decided to adopt the Permissive licence, while protecting the IP of the licensor, while keeping maximum freedom for other businesses to exploit and utilize the beinefits of the licenced work, this includes:
- Host it and run it for private use or for others (SaaS) for a fee or free
- Integrate it into their work and modify it and redistribute it as they like, while protecting their IP part.
- Sell and provide training on using and extending the licenced work.
- Offer maintenance services and integrations for the licenced work.
We encourage businesses to start licencing some of their useful work as a Waqf for small businesses to benifet from. and to dedicate this work to Allah.