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Beyond Zenith

As we develop the primers and our repositories, we look beyond exploration into commercialisation & adoption. To facilitate this, we have ensured that the Zenith program is designed from the ground-up to support future endeavors.

Apache License & Intellectual Property​

All work created or contributed to within Zenith is subject to the FINOS Intellectual Property Policy. This means that all projects managed by the foundation are licensed under the terms of the Apache License 2.0 (unless explicitly approved by the FINOS Board).

This decision was informed primarily by the following characteristics:

  • It is a permissive license, i.e. it does not require anyone to contribute their modifications back to FINOS. While FINOS recognizes the important role that reciprocal licenses such as the GNU General Public License can play in promoting equity between contributors, our members generally prefer to consume permissively licensed code. We’re confident that the benefits of active participation in FINOS projects are sufficient incentive to contributors.

  • It’s widely adopted. Apache 2.0 is used by high-profile, commercially significant open source software projects published by open source communities (most notably the Apache Software Foundation) and major corporations (including Google, Apple, GitHub, Facebook, Microsoft, and Adobe). Software IP attorneys (those reviewing licenses for prospective users, contributors, and members) are generally familiar and comfortable with it, as well as with the accompanying Apache Corporate and Individual Contributor License Agreements.

  • It’s concise and unambiguous. While some free and open source software licenses address political, ethical, and moral issues, reflecting the focus of their authors and users, Apache 2.0 is a straightforward software license raising few interpretive issues. In particular, it explicitly and fairly addresses the licensing of patents: the license from contributors includes any patent claims implicated by their contributions, but not by code contributed by others.