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eft licenses address other possible impediments they ensure that rights cannot be later revoked and require the work and its derivatives to be provided in a form that allows further modifications to be made in software this means requiring that the source code of the derived work be made available together with the software itself 10 economic incentive edit the economic incentives to work on copyleft content can vary traditional copyright law is designed to promote progress by providing economic benefits to creators when choosing to copyleft their work content creators may seek complementary benefits like recognition from their peers in the world of computer programming copyleft licensed computer programs are often created by programmers to fill a need they have noticed such programs are often published with a copyleft license simply to ensure that subsequent users can also freely use modified versions of that program this is especially true for creators who wish to prevent open source hijacking or the act of reusing open source code and then adding extra restrictions to it an action prevented by copyleft licensing the software some creators such as elastic 19 feel that preventing commercial enterprises from using and then selling their product under a proprietary license is also an incentive furthermore the open source culture of programming has been described as a gift culture where social power is determined by an individual s contributions 20 contributing to or creating open source copyleft licensed software of high quality can lead to contributors gaining valuable experience and can lead to future career opportunities 21 copyleft software has economic effects beyond individual creators the presence of quality copyleft software can force proprietary software developers to increase the quality of their software to compete with free software 22 this may also have the effect of preventing monopolies in areas dominated by proprietary software however competition with proprietary software can also be a reason to forgo copyleft the free software foundation recommends that when widespread use of the code is vital for advancing the cause of free software 23 allowing the code to be copied and used freely is more important than a copyleft copyleft application edit common practice for using copyleft is to codify the copying terms for a work with a license any such license typically includes all the provisions and principles of copyleft inside the license s terms this includes the freedom to use the work study the work copy and share the work with others modify the work and distribute exact or modified versions of that work with or without a fee 24 25 unlike similar permissive licenses that also grant these freedoms copyleft licenses also ensure that any modified versions of a work covered by a copyleft license must also grant these freedoms thus copyleft licenses have conditions that modifications of any work licensed under a copyleft license must be distributed under a compatible copyleft scheme and that the distributed modified work must include a means of modifying the work under fair use however copyleft licenses may be superseded just like regular copyrights therefore any person utilizing a source licensed under a copyleft license for works they invent is free to choose any other license or none at all provided they meet the fair use standard 26 copyleft licenses necessarily make creative use of relevant rules and laws to enforce their provisions for example when using copyright law those who contribute to a work under copyleft usually must gain defer or assign copyright holder status citation needed by submitting the copyright of their contributions under a copyleft license they deliberately give up some of the rights that normally follow from copyright including the right to be the unique distributor of copies of the work some laws used for copyleft licenses vary from one country to another and may also be granted in terms that vary from country to country for example in some countries it is acceptable to sell a software product without warranty in standard gnu general public license style while in most european countries it is not permitted for a software distributor to waive all warranties regarding a sold product citation needed for this reason the extent of such warranties is specified in most european copyleft licenses for example the european union public licence eupl 27 or the cecill license 28 a license that allows one to use gnu gpl in combination with a limited warranty for projects which will be run over a network a variation of the gnu gpl called the affero general public license gnu agpl ensures that the source code is available to users of software over a network types and relation to other licenses edit see also free software licence restrictions free non free public domain equivalents permissive license copyleft protective license noncommercial license proprietary license trade secret description grants all rights grants use rights including right to relicense allows proprietization license compatibility grants use rights forbids proprietization grants rights for noncommercial use only may be combined with share alike traditional use of copyright certain rights may or may not be granted no information made public for software pd unlicense cc0 bsd mit apache gpl agpl jrl afpl proprietary software no public license private internal software for other creative works pd cc0 cc by cc by sa fal cc by nc copyright no public license cc by nd unpublished the creative commons icon for share alike a variant of the copyleft symbol copyleft is a distinguishing feature of some free software licenses while other free software licenses are not copyleft licenses because they do not require the licensee to distribute derivative works under the same license there is an ongoing debate as to which class of license provides the greater degree of freedom this debate hinges on complex issues such as the definition of freedom and whose freedoms are more important the potential future recipients of a work freedom from proprietization or just the initial recipient freedom to proprietize however current copyright law and the availability of both types of licenses copyleft and permissive allow authors to choose the type under which to license the works they invent for documents art and other works other than software and code the creative commons share alike licensing system and the gnu free documentation license gfdl allow authors to apply limitations to certain sections of their work exempting some parts of the work from the full copyleft mechanism in the case of the gfdl these limitations include the use of invariant sections which may not be altered by future editors the initial intention of the gfdl was as a device for supporting the documentation of copylefted software however the result is that it can be used for any kind of document strong and weak copyleft edit the strength of the copyleft license governing a work is determined by the extent to its provisions can be imposed on all kinds of derivative works thus the term weak copyleft refers to licenses where not all derivative works inherit the copyleft license whether a derivative work inherits or not often depends on how it was derived weak copyleft licenses are often used to cover software libraries this allows other software to link to the library and be redistributed without the requirement for the linking software to also be licensed under the same terms only changes to the software licensed under a weak copyleft license become subject itself to copyleft provisions of such a license this allows programs of any license to be compiled and linked against copylefted libraries such as glibc and then redistributed without any re licensing required the concrete effect of strong vs weak copyleft has yet to be tested in court 29 free software licenses that use weak copyleft include the gnu lesser general public license and the mozilla public license the gnu general public license is an example of a license implementing strong copyleft a stronger copyleft license is the agpl which requires the publishing of the source code for software as a service use cases 30 31 32 33 the sybase open watcom public license is one of the strongest copyleft licenses as this license closes the so called private usage loophole of the gpl and requires the publishing of source code in any use case for this reason the license is considered non free by the free software foundation the gnu project and the debian project 34 however the license is accepted as open source by the osi the design science license dsl is a strong copyleft license that applies to any work not only software or documentation but also literature artworks music photography and video dsl was written by michael stutz after he took an interest in applying gnu style copyleft to non software works which later came to be called libre works in the 1990s it was used on music recordings visual art and even novels it is not considered compatible with the gnu gpl by the free software foundation 35 full and partial copyleft edit full and partial copyleft relate to another issue full copyleft exists when all parts of a work except the license itself may only be modified and distributed under the terms of the work s copyleft license partial copyleft by contrast exempts some parts of the work from the copyleft provisions permitting distribution of some modifications under terms other than the copyleft license or in some other way does not impose all the principles of copylefting on the work an example of partial copyleft is the gpl linking exception made for some software packages share alike edit the share alike condition in some licenses imposes the requirement that any freedom that is granted regarding the original work must be granted on exactly the same or compatible terms in any derived work this implies that any copyleft license is automatically a share alike license but not the other way around as some share alike licenses include further restrictions such as prohibiting commercial use another restriction is that not everyone wants to share their work and some share alike agreements require that the whole body of work be shared even if the author only wants to share a certain part the plus side for an author of source code is that any modification to the code will not only benefit the original author but that the author will be recognized and ensure the same or compatible license terms cover the changed code 36 some creative commons licenses are examples of share alike copyleft licenses permissive licenses edit main article permissive software license those licenses grant users of the software the same freedoms as copyleft licenses but do not require modified versions of that software to also include those freedoms they have minimal restrictions on how the software can be used modified and redistributed and are thus not copyleft licenses examples of this type of license include the x11 license apache license expat license and the various bsd licenses debate and controversy edit it has been suggested that copyleft has become a divisive issue in the ideological strife between the open source initiative and the free software movement 37 however there is evidence that copyleft is both accepted and proposed by both parties both the osi and the fsf have copyleft and non copyleft licenses in their respective lists of accepted licenses 38 35 the osi s original legal counsel lawrence rosen has written a copyleft license the open software license the osi s licensing how to recognises the gpl as a best practice license 39 some of the software programs of the gnu project are published under non copyleft licenses 40 stallman himself has endorsed the use of non copyleft licenses in certain circumstances most recently in the case of the ogg vorbis license change 41 viral licensing edit main article viral license viral license is a pejorative name for copyleft licenses 42 43 44 45 46 it originates from the terms general public virus or gnu public virus gpv which dates back to 1990 a year after the gplv1 was released 47 48 49 the name viral licenses refers to the fact that any works derived from a copyleft work must preserve the copyleft permissions when distributed some advocates of the various bsd licenses used the term derisively in regards to the gpl s tendency to absorb bsd licensed code without allowing the original bsd work to benefit from it while at the same time promoting itself as freer than other licenses 50 51 52 microsoft vice president craig mundie remarked this viral aspect of the gpl poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it 53 in another context steve ballmer declared that code released under gpl is useless to the commercial sector since it can only be used if the resulting surrounding code is licensed under a gpl compatible license and described it thus as a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches 54 in response to microsoft s attacks on the gpl several prominent free software developers and advocates released a joint statement supporting the license 55 according to fsf compliance engineer david turner the term viral license creates a misunderstanding and a fear of using copylefted free software 56 while a person can catch a virus without active action license conditions take effect upon effective usage or adoption 57 david mcgowan has also written that there is no reason to believe the gpl could force proprietary software to become free software but could try to enjoin the firm from distributing commercially a program that combined with the gpl d code to form a derivative work and to recover damages for infringement if the firm actually copied code from a gpl d program such a suit would be a perfectly ordinary assertion of copyright which most private firms would defend if the shoe were on the other foot 58 richard stallman has described this view with an analogy saying the gpl s domain does not spread by proximity or contact only by deliberate inclusion of gpl covered code in your program it spreads like a spider plant not like a virus 59 popular copyleft licenses such as the gpl have a clause allowing components to interact with non copyleft components as long as the communication is abstract failed verification such as executing a command line tool with a set of switches or interacting with a web server 60 as a consequence even if one module of an otherwise non copyleft product is placed under the gpl it may still be legal for other components to communicate with it in ways such as these clarification needed this allowed communication may or may not include reusing libraries or routines via dynamic linking some commentators say it does 61 the fsf asserts it does not and explicitly adds an exception allowing it in the license for the gnu cl...
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