I am programmer. Can I set my code under “FOSS license”?

First of all, “FOSS” is no formal definition. It does not imply legal consequences. Legal consequences follow the license of a software product. The license is formulated by the creator of a software. A license are the set of rules how to use the software.
Examples of licenses which are usually referred to when discussing FOSS:

• GPL (Gnu Public License): Software with GPL is “free” and “open”. You can do whatever you feel to do with it: use it or change it. The product you build with the GPL-software must itself be released under the GPL again. Sometimes this is called “copyleft” because the freedom to change the software remains untouched.
• BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), in contrast: You can do whatever you feel to do with the software: use it or change it. If you want, you can set the source code of your change/enhancement “closed”. If you use BSD software, you can do built your product with it, and you do not have to set your product free or open. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD)
• LGPL (Lesser GPL): You can use software with a LGPL, and you do not have to set your source code under a LGPL. You can keep your source code “closed”. But you must keep the LGPL-software under LGPL-license. For example, you can reference a LGPL-library in your source code. The library is under LGPL-license, but your source code is “closed”.

Again, these are abbreviated statements of the main ideas. Please see Block4-Open Source Licences.pdf (276Ko) and  Block5-FLOSS Licences Details.pdf (294Ko) for detailed information.

Everybody has the right to create a license suitable for his/her product. More and more licenses claim to use the idea of FOSS. OSI (Open Source Initiative) http://www.opensource.org/ is an assessment organization which can assess a “FOSS license”. OSI checks the license against a standard. It determines whether the idea of FOSS was realized. But OSI evaluations are not legally binding; it can only give recommendations.

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