Short analysis on copyleft licenses

Short analysis on copyleft licenses

 

What is copyleft?

If the objective of copyright is to grant its owner the exclusive right to copy and distribute, then the objective of copyleft is the opposite. Copyleft makes use of copyright law to grant individuals equal and inalienable rights to copy, share, modify, and improve creative works.

 

Different licenses

All the down below listed descriptions of Copyleft licenses were taken from snyk. Their website had the best summary of different licenses and I didn't see the need to rewrite them.

Strong Copyleft Licenses

GPL(The GNU General Public License)

The GPL preserves license notifications and copyright terms and is suitable for commercial, patent, and private use. Any software that uses GPL code must distribute all its source code under the same license. So if you use GPL code in your software (e.g., by using a GPL library), and distribute your application, all your source code must be made available under the same GPL license. This restriction makes the GPL a strong copyleft license.

AGPL(The Affero GNU General Public License)

The AGPL only adds only one clause, but an important one for some software. Because the GPL license is only triggered when software is distributed, there is a loophole for software that is made available over the network only, i.e., not explicitly “distributed”. The AGPL license closes this loophole by including a remote network interaction clause that triggers the GPL license for any software used over a network.

Weak Copyleft Licenses

LGPL(The GNU Lesser General Public License)

The LGP provides the same level of terms as the AGPL and GPL copyleft open source licenses, including preserving copyright and license notifications. The prime variation is that smaller projects or objects accessed through larger licensed works do not require distribution of the larger project. Moreover, the modified source does not have to be distributed under the same terms that apply to the larger code project.

MPL(The Mozilla Public License)

The MPL is the least restrictive copyleft open source software license. They make it easy to modify and use their code in closed-source and/or proprietary software, as long as any code licensed under the MPL is kept in separate files and these files are distributed with the software. The MPL also includes patent grants and enforces that copyright notices be retained.

Public Domain Licenses

The BSD License

The BSD License is another permissive open source license that preserves license notices and copyrights but allows larger or licensed works to be distributed without source code and under different license terms. The 2- clause BSD License is very similar to the MIT open source license, while the 3-clause and 4-clause BSD licenses add more requirements or restrictions related to reuse and other terms.

The MIT X11 License

The MIT License which bears the name of the famous university where it originated, is perhaps the most used open source license in the world, perhaps because it is very short and clear and easy to understand. It allows anyone to do whatever they wish with the original code, as long as the original copyright and license notice is included either in the distributed source code or software. It removes any liability from authors and does not explicitly contain a patent grant.

The Apache License

The Apache License requires license notifications and copyrights on the distributed code and/or as a notice in the software. However, derivative works, larger projects, or modifications are allowed to carry different licensing terms when distributed and are not required to provide source code. Apache licenses contain a patent grant.

 

My opinion of copyleft licenses

I am a big fan of free, as in free speech software. In terms of free software, I agree with the GNU Project. Everyone should be able to see and modify what is running on their computer. Sadly not every software can be licensed as a GPL. Every project has different needs and as a result a different license. Also different people have different understanding of free. For example GPL and BSD.

 

Sources:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html

https://copyleft.org/

https://wiki.itcollege.ee/index.php/E-SPEAIT_T6_Computers_and_Laws_II

https://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/open-source/foss-licences-wars/foss-licences-wars/types-of-licences.xhtml

https://snyk.io/learn/open-source-licenses/

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