Software Licensing News: GPL, Copyleft, and Beyond
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-20 16:16:09 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-20 16:16:09 UTC
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Last year, I provided a look at the top legal issues from the year before. Continuing with this tradition, here is my take on the top ten legal developments in FOSS during 2013.
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The licences page breaks down a number of popular options, including MIT, Apache and GPL. Each is explained in the form of Required / Permitted / Forbidden, so it’s clear what others can and can’t do with your work.
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Creative Commons and the GPL are legal tools to facilitate sharing, and in their domains they are analogous to peer review and publication in scientific journals for scientists. However, like the conflict between free and proprietary software, there is a conflict between open access and proprietary access to scientific publications, a conflict Aaron Swartz became aware of as an activist.
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Earlier today I was looking at a source file for the OpenStack Ceilometer docs and noticed that there's a copyright statement at the top. Now, in no way do I want to pick on Nicholas. There are hundreds of such copyright statements in the OpenStack docs and code, and this is just the example I happened to be looking at.
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The open source license you choose for your project, or for the projects you choose to contribute to, can have significant effects on how what you contribute is used. One question that has garnered quite a bit of interest recently is the fall in popularity of copyleft licenses in favor of permissive licenses. An article last year looked at the issue of large number of projects on GitHub that have no explicit license and posited the question about whether we live in a 'post open source software' world, where seemingly open source software has no license. After some time, GitHub agreed that licensing is important and worked to improve the situation with a license chooser.
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When I first started writing my little software programs, I borrowed some code from my chum Mike Field (a.k.a. The Mighty Hamster) who is based in New Zealand. At that time, I noticed that in the comments to his code, Mike had the line "// License: GPLv3" (this refers to the GNU General Public License).
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Cooper has seen the benefits of open source collaboration first hand — and has learned the hard way what happens when developers don’t share code when they should. At Apple, she managed a team that developed a video chat program based on Apple’s QuickTime video format, and the code behind Quicktime wasn’t even shared with everyone inside the company. “There were some people in my group that helped write Quicktime, but because of an internal licensing struggle at the time, the QuickTime team shut them out of their own code tree,” she says. “It was really inefficient, and it really pissed me off.”
Recent Techrights' Posts
- They Don't Tell Us that 'Digitalisation' (Now Sold as "Hey Hi") Just Means Customers Become Unpaid Staff and Are Made Accountable
- People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) Has Layoffs and Microsoft Gaming/Entertainment Division Has an Uncertain Future
- it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
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- Links 22/07/2025: "Blog Restart" and Microsoft Clobbered by “ToolShell"
- Links for the day
- Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
- Burn more money (borrowed, loans), then hope the waste will somehow translate into profit?
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- It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
- Blue-Collar Trolls vs White-Collar Trolls
- Examples of white-collar trolls
- Apple Vision Pro Failed So Badly That Its Sales Are About 2,000 Times Smaller Than iPhone Sales
- What's left for Apple to offer other than hype?
- To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
- In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
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- There are usability aspects, aside from accessibility aspects
- Why Wayland (and XWayland) Won't Solve the Key Problem It Proclaims to be Tackling (the Same Is True for Rust)
- The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
- Diplomatic Immunity Should Not Exist for Anybody
- The EPO in its current form gradually 'normalises' the end of European democracy
- Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
- A week ago we lodged our third lawsuit
- Microsoft Mass Layoffs and Shutdowns Became the New Normal at Microsoft
- Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, July 21, 2025
- FSF "Raised Almost $139,000 During This Summer Campaign"
- "Thank you for making a stand against dystopia!"
- Gemini Links 22/07/2025: VPS Exploited and Fear of View
- Links for the day
- LLM Bots vs Techrights
- Slows things down a bit
- New Publication Sheds Lights on Abuse of Workers at the European Patent Office (EPO)
- Put in simple terms, they're killing the Office, harming remaining staff, try to hire rubber-stampers
- Links 21/07/2025: Hardware, Health, and Imperialism
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/07/2025: "When Buying Isn't Owning" and "CMS Special Edition"
- Links for the day
- Links 21/07/2025: Indie Web and Toxic Politics
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Microsoft Lawyers Throwing Stones in Glass Houses
- threatened me with bankruptcy
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- do not be misled; what Google does isn't smart, it's just ripping off the sites it already crawled for as long as 27 years
- Making the Case to Dump Microsoft and GAFAM for National and Digital Sovereignty
- "Sovereignty is difficult"
- The Tactics of the Opposition (Microsoft Lunduke): Associate With K00ks, Throw in Vaccines to Muddy the Water
- Who stands to gain from this?
- Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) and Largest Patent Monopoly Office Needs More Transparency, Not Less Transparency
- In the EPO, what good are elections when one candidate literally bribes all the voters?
- How Not to Report News About Microsoft
- This pattern of misreporting is so widespread that it's hard to believe it's not intentional
- Computer Science is Under Attack, They Want Everyone to be a Consumer
- If people can no longer acquire Computer Science education and real Computer Science experience, they will not know how to control their own digital destiny or emancipate the very same universities that now control the syllabus and instead of teaching Computer Science encourage the outsourcing of systems
- The Best Tools Are the Simplest Tools
- There's a hidden message here about the merits of sticking with X
- Ofcom Online Safety Group Speaks of Protecting Women Online, Will Brett Wilson LLP Ever Listen?
- They've essentially became like the Taliban's "burka police"
- Social Control Media Relies on Advertisers, So It'll Always Be Hostile Towards Free Software
- Sales, sales, sales
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 20, 2025
- Fragmentation of Data
- Life is too short to "hoard" data
- In Defence of "Spinning Rust"
- Just because something is "old" (or older) doesn't mean it ought to become extinct
- Using Free Software to Prepare Legal Documents
- LibreOffice is openly complaining about OOXML as an obstacle
- Tech and Technology Are Not the Same Anymore
- "Are you into tech, Sir?"
- Our Articles About SLAPPs Receive Recognition and Interest
- This week we shall continue writing about the 3 lawsuits we filed
- Are You Served?
- For many people, advocacy of Free software and GPL enforcement are assumed to be happening
- Conspiracy or grooming? Alex Jurado, Voice of Reason compared to Outreachy
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 20/07/2025: Security Breaches and Former 'Open' 'AI' Engineer on Hype and Culture Issues
- Links for the day
- Links 20/07/2025: Fending Off BRICS and US Government Attacks Its Own Media (Like China and Russia)
- Links for the day
- Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 20/07/2025: Summertime and OCC25 Wrap-up
- Links for the day
- Jamie Zawinski Complained About Wayland, Then Decided to Give It a Go, Now Complains Again About Wayland
- Ask IBM (Red Hat) why it's worth throwing so much away just for Wayland fanaticism
- Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu, LinuxSecurity, and More
- former "Linux" blogs which basically became slopfarms
- Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
- If WhatsApp is made to "leave", that means Facebook or "Meta".
- Links 20/07/2025: More GAFAM Lawsuits, Layoffs, and SLAPPs
- Links for the day
- Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
- We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
- Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
- PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
- More Microsoft Shutdowns That Mostly Slipped Under the Radar
- Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
- Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
- There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
- The History of Daily Links and Politics
- "I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
- Ageism in Tech
- Your protocol is "old"...
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- Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
- "The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
- There are far more layoffs at Microsoft than at Intel, but you would not get this impression based on Wall Street media
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025