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Licensing of the ACPICA Source Code
The ACPICA source code is offered under these three different licenses:
1. A GPLv2 license
2. A BSD license
3. A non-OSI source license (the “Intel license”)
The user may choose the license that best fits their development model. Two of the licenses used,
GPLv2 and BSD, are OSI-approved open source licenses, one of which is copyleft and one of which
is permissive. The other license, the “Intel license,” is permissive and provides source code, but has
not been submitted for OSI approval. Some ACPICA customers nevertheless prefer the Intel license
over the OSI-approved license options. Please consult with your legal counsel as to which of these
license choices best fits your needs.
View the ACPICA licenses here: ACPICA licensing source code header
For additional information concerning multi-license software models, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-licensing
The user may select which license they wish to use for ACPICA via the source code packages
below. There are separate source code downloads (tar/zip) for the Intel license version and for
the BSD & GPLv2 license version (called the “dual license” version). These downloads are
available at https://acpica.org/downloads.
Packages containing the Intel license in the source code module headers:
acpica-unix
acpica-win
iasl-win (Binary Windows versions of ACPICA tools)
Packages containing the GPLv2/BSD dual license in the source code module headers:
acpica-unix2 (deprecated and will be removed)
acpitests-unix
acpitests-win
For source code packages that contain the Intel license, only the Intel license applies; for packages
that contain the dual license, the user can choose either the BSD or GPLv2 license they wish to apply
to their use of ACPICA.
The ACPICA test suite is licensed under the GPLv2/BSD license only.
Submitting Contributions to ACPICA
Any contributions (including patches, bug fixes, improvements, or new features) submitted to the
ACPICA project will be governed by the “simplified” BSD license reproduced below. Contributions
to ACPICA are accepted under this license in order to preserve ACPICA’s ability to license ACPICA
under all three of the licenses described above.
License for Contributions to ACPICA
Copyright (c) 2000 – 2017 Intel Corp.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted
provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions
and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions
and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINES
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.