About the software licenses

Open source GIS software offer a very high degree of freedom. Their license types can differ; however, they are all permissive licenses. That means we can use, distribute, modify, and distribute the modified versions of the software. We can also use them in commercial settings and even sell the software if we can find someone willing to buy it (as long as we sell the software with the source code under the same license). The only restriction is for companies who would like to sell their software under a proprietary license using open source components. They simply cannot do that with most of the software, although some of the licenses permit this kind of use, too.

There is one very important thing to watch out for when we use open source software and data. If somebody contributes often years of work to the community, at least proper attribution can be expected. Most of the open source licenses obligate this right of the copyright holder; however, we must distinguish software from data. Most of the licenses of open source software require the adapted product to reproduce the same license agreement. That is, we don't have to attribute the used software in a work, but we must include the original license with the copyright holders' name when we create an application with them. Data, on the other hand, is required to be attributed when we use it in our work.

There are a few licenses which do not obligate us to give proper attribution. These licenses state that  the creator of the content waives every copyright and gives the product to the public to use without any restrictions. Two of the most common licenses of this kind are the Unlicense, which is a software license, and the Creative Commons Public Domain, which is in the GIS world mostly used as a data license.