type of Boost licence

Question

What is the Boost licence?

Answer 1

Boost has their own license called the "Boost Software License." According to the Free Software Foundation, it qualifies as a free software license and is compatible with GNU GPL.

It's very short so that you can read it for yourself. Here is the full text:

Boost Software License - Version 1.0 - August 17th, 2003

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization obtaining a copy of the software and accompanying documentation covered by this license (the "Software") to use, reproduce, display, distribute, execute, and transmit the Software, and to prepare derivative works of the Software, and to permit third-parties to whom the Software is furnished to do so, all subject to the following:

The copyright notices in the Software and this entire statement, including the above license grant, this restriction and the following disclaimer, must be included in all copies of the Software, in whole or in part, and all derivative works of the Software, unless such copies or derivative works are solely in the form of machine-executable object code generated by a source language processor.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Answer 2

Here's how the folks at GNU describe Boost's license:

This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.

This means, as far as they are concerned, you are free to use it with GPL software, but if you use it yourself (without any GPL) the resulting executable doesn't have to be what they consider Free Software.

Basically it is both compatible with GPL software and with proprietary software.

That's bad from the GNU perspective, but its great if you are working for someone who makes proprietary software and you would still like to use Boost.