The latest version of the license is 1.1

The old 1.0 license was a bit longer. The 1.1 license is simpler and shorter and does not have author notes section at the bottom of the license.

NRCOL Software license philosophy:

• aim for rapid and efficient knowledge exchange and progress.

• aim to share knowledge with others as much as possible instead of competing and hiding knowledge for selfish gains. Work with knowledge partners, not against your knowledge partners. This is opposite to business, who competes with their knowledge partners, which frankly doesn't make any sense (or ends up forming merged monopolies)

• users may capitalize by monetary exchange if they feel the need to, but the long term goals of NRCOL:

  knowledge is the capital.

• Aim to reduce license games, money games, number games, and increase productivity by doing so. You shouldn't have to read a license 40 times and/or count your money 30 times before you are allowed to use some software. What long term purpose does that serve?

• Source code is recommended to be released. The author can choose to not release the sources if he must make this compromise, if hopefully only temporary.

• similar to freebsd, or apache license, but even less restrictive.

• no extreme political stance. NRCOL allows users to capitalize or not to capitalize, allows users to be different rather then exactly equal. NRCOL just aims for long term progress and knowledge instead of short term virtual capital gains or bizarre restrictions that end up halting long term development.

• free cost and free speech are nice. NRCOL is dead honest when it comes to these issues: Cost restrictions are bad too, not just speech. Both low or free cost and free speech assist rapid information exchange and knowledge. The world is not perfect, however. Yes you can charge money for any part of any NRCOL software, sources, distribution or shipment. It is hoped that in the future free cost and free speech are factors of your NRCOL software (since that is wonderful), but we understand you must make compromises sometimes.

  Some people even need to make a living selling their software sources. It's not different than releasing your sources without documentation and charging for that (or consulting)! You are in the end, charging money for something restrictive. It would be better if all was free, but what compromises you must make are your decision.

• NRCOL differs from GNU, Mozilla or OSI. It's more like BSD/MIT license. The problem with BSD and MIT licenses is they have the word Berkley embedded in the license acronym, or Massachusetts.. But what in the world does Berkley or Massachusetts have to do with a license? it's a place in USA that has nothing to do with the license itself. Whereas NRCOL acronym tells you in plain words what the software is: No Ridiculous Costs, or Limits.

General recommendations:

• NRCOL recommends anyone who updates sources of a project to notify the original author indirectly or directly. NRCOL strongly recommends sources be updated using systems that allow easy updating of source files (CVS, SVN, other)

• NRCOL strongly recommends that not just source code be released, but that documentation be released also. In fact in some cases, non-technical users may find documentation more useful than source code. Hopefully you can prioritize what is more important to release first and what to focus efforts on, with your ultimate aim of releasing as much documentation and source as possible for the long term.

• Stamp your files with ~nrcol . Users do not need to see copyright or other junk in the source files, but it will be helpful for them to know about nrcol stamping system.

• the ~NRCOL stamping system is used so that users are not confused about the sources. Is this software constrained or not? Is it public domain? If nrcol stamp is used the users are knowledgeable about what they can do with the sources. If you release a document with no copyright or NRCOL stamp on it, the user is unsure what the document is. If you release NRCOL stamped documents, programs, or source code, the user is sure about that the item is restricted by nothing (unless author notes are given at the end of the NRCOL license file).

Temporary costs, losses, and limits may lead to a long term progress.. but a continual harping on costs, losses, and limits leads to a one long term failure, or several small failures.

NRCOL understands that the world is not in perfect order for everything to be cost and limit free immediately, but NRCOL at least aims for nil restrictions (which if you like it or not, does include costs) and nil limits as its long term future goal and motto. Even if impossible, high aims always do well.

If your software is not perfectly limitless or constraint-free, and you release your source code under a modified NRCOL, you at least state that you sincerely intend to do something about today's ridiculous limits and costs placed on goods and software.

In this way, NRCOL is just like a public domain release, except for the fact that NRCOL has a clear source code stamping system and people are less confused about what the software really means (public domain software often has confusing copyright issues).

The aim of NRCOL is for users not to waste time reading the license, rather to get on with software, hardware, and goods in the most efficient manner possible. NRCOL encourages rapid interchange between developers. If you have to make temporary sacrifices or compromises (such as charging a temporary fee for shipping a software CD or for your efforts, or even charging for a binary), NRCOL allows this temporary compromise, in order to encourage and focus on rapid knowledge interchange and communication.

In other words it is exactly like MIT or BSD licenses, but without the Berkley or Massachusetts words in the acronym (why are they part of a license acronym when they have nothing to do with the license?).

NRCOL believes any harping on constraints, costs, or limits of any sort halts knowledge and progress. It's a fairly simple idea:

  
 constraints + costs + limits + restrictions + software 
   = slowed down progress

 small compromises + software
   = faster progress.

 software - constraints - costs - limits - restrictions 
   = fastest progress.

FAQ

• See the NRCOL FAQ

See here: NRCOL License Text