What a licence is: copyright by default, permission by licence

When someone writes code, an article or a script for a podcast, copyright in most legal systems arises automatically: no registration is needed. The practical effect is simple. Without permission, other people may not copy, modify or distribute the work.

A licence is that permission. The owner states in writing what others may do and what conditions they must meet in return. A licence does not transfer ownership; the author keeps the copyright and grants some of its rights to others.

Three questions are enough to read almost any licence:

• Permissions: commercial use, modification, distribution, private use and sometimes patent use.
• Conditions: for example keeping the copyright notice, stating changes, or publishing source code.
• Limitations: usually a disclaimer of warranty and liability, sometimes no trademark rights.

The Open Source Initiative maintains the Open Source Definition, which sets out the criteria a licence must meet to be called open source, and keeps a list of licences it has approved. The SPDX License List gives each common licence a short, standard identifier.

For teams building financial products this is not theory. Every library added to a codebase brings a licence with it, and that licence decides how the product may be sold, deployed or delivered to a bank. The same applies to fonts, datasets, icons and AI models. This season works through them one at a time.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources: Open Source Initiative: The Open Source Definition, Open Source Initiative: Licenses, SPDX License List

Audio: listen to this week's episode, a short conversation on the same topic.

This week's business calendar: October 4 – October 10, 2026

Generated automatically from the the IslamicOpenFinance calendar: business days, holidays and the T+1 settlement date for each day of the week.

Week at a glance

• Business days, Saudi Arabia (weekend: Friday and Saturday): 5
• Business days, United Arab Emirates (weekend: Saturday and Sunday): 5
• Business days, Bahrain (weekend: Friday and Saturday): 5
• Business days, Qatar (weekend: Friday and Saturday): 5
• Business days, Kuwait (weekend: Friday and Saturday): 5
• Business days, Oman (weekend: Friday and Saturday): 5
• Business days, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) (weekend: Saturday and Sunday): 5
• Business days, Indonesia (weekend: Saturday and Sunday): 5
• Business days, Pakistan (weekend: Saturday and Sunday): 5
• Business days, United Kingdom (England and Wales) (weekend: Saturday and Sunday): 5
• No month end this week.

Day by day

The same dates are available from the calendar API, per market.