Comparing TPL with other licenses
A side-by-side summary of TPL 2.3 against the most common permissive and copyleft licenses. This is a convenience overview, not legal advice — each license's own text is authoritative. TPL references link into the full text.
| Condition | TPL 2.3 | MIT | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial use | Yes, explicit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Modify & redistribute | Yes, explicit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Patent grant | Yes, explicit §3 | Not stated | Yes, explicit | Not stated | Yes, explicit |
| Copyleft on derivatives | No — no copyleft §4.3 | No | No | No | Yes, strong |
| "Works built with it" are yours | Yes — User Works §4 | Not addressed | Not addressed | Not addressed | Not addressed |
| Explicit AI / ML training terms | Yes §4.4 | Silent | Silent | Silent | Silent (disputed) |
| Must document changes | Best effort §4.4 | No | Yes (notices) | No | Yes (marked) |
| Trademark / brand protection | Yes §8 | Silent | Limited | Non-endorsement clause | Silent |
| Third-party asset pass-through | Explicit §6 | Notice retention | NOTICE file | Notice retention | Whole work licensed |
| Hosted-service notice path | Explicit §5.8 | Silent | Silent | Silent | Silent (see AGPL) |
| Governing law / venue designation | Yes §12.2 | Silent | Silent | Silent | Silent |
| License text size | Long (~46 KB) | Very short | Medium | Very short | Long |
"Silent" means the license text does not address the question; behavior then falls back to general copyright law and interpretation. The full texts: TPL, MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD-3-Clause, GPL-3.0.
The short version
- Come from MIT/Apache and want more explicit terms? TPL keeps everything permissive and adds explicit answers for AI training, User Works, hosted services, trademarks and third-party assets — at the cost of a longer text.
- Come from GPL and want to keep your derivatives closed? TPL has no copyleft (§4.3) while still requiring notices and attribution (§5).
- Want a one-file permissive license with patent protection? TPL bundles an explicit patent grant (§3) with permissive distribution — Apache-2.0 is the closest common alternative.