Finally, we note there are other software licenses that make source code available, but are not open source licenses.
Although copyleft licenses do not prohibit selling software, since the full source code must remain freely available, in practice vendors of copylefted software must commercialize the support of the product, rather than the product itself.
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is slightly less restrictive version of the GPL used primarily for libraries as it does not require software that uses LGPL licensed software as a library to be licensed under the LGPL. That is, the source code must remain publicly and freely available. In contrast, copyleft licenses, such as the different versions of the GNU Public License (GPL), require that public redistributions of licensed software remain licensed under a GPL license. This enables source code licensed under a permissive license to be incorporated into commercial, proprietary programs that are not open source. They specifically do not require that redistributions of modified source code be licensed under the same license as the original source code. Permissive licenses, such as the Apache, BSD, MIT, and Python licenses, place minimal restrictions on how modified code may be distributed, such as requiring attribution and limiting liability.
Preprint submitted to Elsevier May 4, 2016įall into two categories: permissive and copyleft. * Corresponding Author Email address: (David Ryan Koes) This is achieved by making the full source code of the software available to users. The unifying theme of open source software licenses is that they allow users to use, modify, and distribute software without significant restrictions. However, as a practical matter, especially with regards to scientific software, such distinctions remain philosophical rather than practical as the most popular software licenses are both free and open source. The distinctions between free and open source software are largely philosophical - the free software movement is primary motivated by user freedoms ("free as in speech, not free as in beer") while the open source movement is more concerned with promoting an open development model to enhance software quality. In this review we categorize, enumerate, and describe available open source software packages for molecular modeling and computational chemistry.įree and open source software (FOSS) is software that is both considered "free software," as defined by the Free Software Foundation () and "open source," as defined by the Open Source Initiative (). Open source software development provides many advantages to users of modeling applications, not the least of which is that the software is free and completely extendable. The success of molecular modeling and computational chemistry efforts are, by definition, dependent on quality software applications. Somayeh Pirhadia, Jocelyn Sunseria, David Ryan Koesa'*ĪDepartment of Computational and Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript.
This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. Please cite this article as: Somayeh Pirhadi, Jocelyn Sunseri, David Ryan Koes, Open Source Molecular Modeling, (2016), Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling Author: Somayeh Pirhadi Jocelyn Sunseri David Ryan Koes