I have a question on KiCad license.
Is there any free version of KiCad software ?
Can we use that for freelance projects on available on upwork and other freelance websites ?
There are several videos on KiCad tutorials on Youtube channels. How these people get license of KiCad or they are using free version for making videos online ?
This pops up every couple of years. If you type “KiCad license” in the search box, you will get lots of past discussions. Here’s the most recent one.
TL;DR: Yes KiCad is free to use, you don’t need to “obtain” a license and you may use KiCad for projects, even paid work. The GPL governs the distribution of the source code.
Strictly speaking the GPL governs also the distribution of the binaries: you are allowed to distribute the binaries only if you distribute also the corresponding source code (I’m simplifying). GPL is a complex beast with all its details and legal jargon, but for ordinary end users it boils down to this:
You can download and use the software freely for any purpose; and you can give it to others personally or privately without any fear of any kind of legal consequences.
The first sentence is valid even from the legal viewpoint, although not legally binding because it’s not directly from the license text (and in the end only a court decision is binding).
The second sentence is a practical non-legal advice for those who don’t need to care about bureaucracy of companies and/or lawyers. Also, enforcing a license is the licensor’s responsibility, and I’m totally 100% sure that the representatives of the KiCad project won’t sue anyone for distributing KiCad binaries in an honest purpose even without the corresponding source code. (The whole “corresponding source code with the binaries” thing is today completely outdated and ambiguous because of Internet, online source code repositories etc.)
There are modified licenses for the situations that have emerged, such as the Affero GPL for the situation where someone offers SaaS and hoarding their changes to the sources.
Online code repositiories change nothing, because the GPL already accepts a pointer to a repo where the source may be obtained as sufficient. So you can get rid of that CD burner.
But a discussion of various licenses is not for this forum.
Discussion about the license of KiCad is directly related to KiCad. On the other hand, legal details of GPL are mostly irrelevant to most of the users. Those who want to distribute the binaries publicly many need to consider their company policies etc. Then it would be better to ask the development team if the company doesn’t want to directly distribute the source code.
Yes, it seems to be true especially for GPL3 (which is more up to date with the real world than v2 and which KiCad uses), but still only with qualifications. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#TOCSourceAndBinaryOnDifferentSites and https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#SourceAndBinaryOnDifferentSites. Again, this isn’t relevant for a normal user, only for those who want to redistribute the binaries publicly.
It matters if one is capable of making changes to the source and building binary packages. Then one should pay attention that the patches are available. Easiest way to do this is to fork the repo and push ones patches to the fork.
Yes, that was bypassed but is important for OSS, and I would guess that there are much more users who want to modify the source than there are those who want to redistribute the compiled binaries. Yet, are they “normal users”? I don’t feel like normal… 
In any case, if anyone asks here if they are allowed to use KiCad, I assume they wouldn’t touch the source code anyway.
It’s abnormal users what cause progress. (Apols to Python, Monty 
).
If someone calls me normal, I’m in doubt to whether to feel offended, or use the idiot stamp on his forehead and then ignore him.
Almost. Excerpt from GPL:
You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code.
I have not read the whole thing, but as I recall, there is no mention at all of how source code is distributed. You just have to make sure that there is a way for people using your software to be able to obtain the source code. Just a valid email address is probably sufficient (If you react to it and send the source code to the interested party). when you get 10’s of requests every day, putting the thing in a public repository would be more logical. (But won’t save you from more email requests for the short term).
I was also wondering why joniengineer (OP) asked this question in the first place, and why it is a recurring question. There is very little info about the licenses in KiCad’s about box:
It only mentions a “set of open source applications”, and there is a (C) 1992 - 2024 KiCad Developers Team in the header. It does not mention the GPL at all, and certainly does not show the GPL license text. The documentation (from the “Getting started” to the help files of all of KiCad’s sub programs) does mention the GPL, and has direct links to it, but the statements are just bout the documentation, not the software itself.
Copyright
This document is Copyright © 2010-2023 by its contributors as listed below. You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), version 3 or later, or the Creative Commons Attribution License (Deed - Attribution 3.0 Unported - Creative Commons), version 3.0 or later.
Should you come across anyone selling KiCad licenses, please report it here.
Note that publicly is not relevant. For example, if I install standard KiCad packages on a friend’s laptop, I have to tell them that they may obtain the sources by following the link to the KiCad download site.
Yes, but I’m being a bit more practical here. For example companies which do things in public must often be very careful. In the other end of the spectrum, I wonder if anyone would actually see any problem in me giving a USB stick with a GPL’ed program without source or written offer in it to a friend. I’m quite strict myself in these kind of things, even nitpicking, but it would be madness to say I would be doing something morally wrong or that I would be in legally gray area (seriously speaking).
Why would you relinquish the chance to proselyte for Open Source?
Good question I have to think for a while, if I’m ever going to answer. Meanwhile: Open Source != Free Software.
This seems a little harsh; inferring being some sort of Open Source zealot?
All my friends are converted. 
I got rid of the rest. 
Just 
ding.
No no, Open Source is reasonable, Free Software is zealotism… 
It is simpler to say what you cannot do - I cannot take the KICad source code. Modify it (mainly changing copyright notices, but maybe add a new feature) and build binaries and sell them as DavidPCBCad.
Third parties are free to fork the code, but the changes have to be made available
No, that is not how the GPL works.
You can fork the code, make any changes you like, and use the modified version yoursel without making any source code available. Only if you give the program to someone else, you also have to give that other person the sourcecode if he requests it.
So, if yo make an alchemy module that turns PCB’s into gold, you can sell your gold PCB’s without ever releasing the alchemy module. But once you start to delegate making gold PCB’s to someone else, you also have to give them the sourcecode of the alchemy module on request. It gets a bit murky for me when you are a company and only direct employees of you are making the gold PCB’s.
