Beerware is a form of software where the author wishes to receive a crate of beer as a prerequisite for use.
Beerware generally falls under freeware. Copyright is based on the author. Use of beerware is mainly for internet-distributed software. These are generally the lighter applications, CGI modules, PHP classes and the like. The address where the author wishes to receive the crate beer is often mentioned in a document that comes with the software.
Software developers are also closing a bet with a bite of beer.
In some cases, drinking a beer in the name of the author is also approved. The term was invented by John Bristor in Pensacola, Florida on April 25, 1987. The first software distributed under this license was uploaded in 1987 and 1988. There have been many variants of this license since then.
Poul-Henning Kamp's bearer license is very simple and short, unlike the GPL, which was a good joke in his eyes. The full text is as follows:
"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42): <phk@FreeBSD.org> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Poul-Henning Kamp.
Also seewiki
