[License-discuss] Strong and weak copyleft

[Gervase Markham]

On 09/04/15 15:27, Jim Jagielski wrote:
> Well, the FSF itself uses the concept of weak: For example,
> when describing WxWidgets:
> 
>     Like the LGPL it is a weak copyleft license, so we recommend it only in special circumstances.
> 
> So, at least according to https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html,
> the FSF considers LGPL as weak copyleft.

One occasionally wonders if the FSF doesn't consider the GPLv2 to be a
"weak" copyleft ;-)

The normal definition of "weak" that I have seen is a copyleft whose
scope applies only to the code specifically licensed under it, e.g. the
MPLv2. The LGPL rather falls in between this definition of "weak", and
the "strong" copyleft of the GPL.

Gerv