University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License
# University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License

The University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License, or UIUC license, is a permissive free software license, based on the MIT/X11 license and the 3-clause BSD license. By combining parts of these two licenses, it attempts to be clearer and more concise than either.

The license is the result of efforts by a University of Illinois committee set up in 2001. The intention was to create a new license standard for both NCSA and the worldwide software community in general. It was formally certified as an open-source license during a March 28, 2002 board meeting of the Open Source Initiative.

Source code under the NCSA license can be incorporated into proprietary products without the reciprocity requirements that copyleft free software licenses raise. The license is compatible with all versions of the GNU General Public License. Notable software using the license includes LLVM and Clang (version 8.0.1 or earlier).

## Terms

The following is a license template. On an actual license the sections within angle brackets (year, owner organization name, etc.) will be filled out.

## Comparison to other licenses

The University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License is template-based, like the MIT/X11 and BSD licenses.

The initial license grant is based on text from the MIT license; it clearly states that it applies to the software plus any associated documentation files, and is more specific about what rights are conveyed than the BSD license.

The three license clauses are almost identical to those found in the modified BSD license. It requires that redistributions reproduce the license, and prevents the names of contributors from being used to promote derived products without permission. Here it is more precise than the MIT license, which does not distinguish between redistributions in source code or object form.

The University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License inspired Lawrence Rosen of the Open Source Initiative to create the Academic Free License. The Academic Free License is more complex than the BSD, MIT and NCSA licenses, and covers additional areas such as patent and trademark law.

