A
free software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and
redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by
copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a
software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a licence is
free software as conferred by the copyright holder. Free software licenses are applied to
software in
source code as also binary
object code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms.