[License-discuss] Strong and weak copyleft

[Lawrence Rosen]

Jim Jagielski wants to compete with definitions of "copyleft". :-)  

Here's what I wrote in my own book ("Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom
and Intellectual Property Law" in chapter 5, page 105, in the section on
"Copyleft and Reciprocity").  

   "The Free Software Foundation also describes copyleft as a
   rule that, when redistributing a program, one cannot add
   restrictions to deny other people the central software freedoms.
   The word restriction is very vague in a licensing context;
   almost any of the terms and conditions in a license can be
   described as a restriction of some sort. This limitation on
   restrictions in the definition of copyleft causes some attorneys,
   including me, heartburn."

Here's what I concluded about "copyleft" at the end of that section:

   "But I do not find the term useful and I won't use that word again
   In this book."

/Larry


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Jagielski [mailto:jim at jimjag.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2015 11:14 AM
To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com; license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Strong and weak copyleft

I wasn't disagreeing, per se, with the "VERY WEAK", et.al.
classification, it's just that I would not consider either of them copyleft
at all.

    "Copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work)
     free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the
     program to be free as well."

:)

> On Apr 10, 2015, at 12:20 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> 
> Jim Jagielski wrote:
>> I would even question whether Apache and CCO are really "copyleft" in 
>> any
> way... :)
> 
> If we're going to invent a distinction between strong and weak, let's 
> make it a thorough one. :-)
> 
> As for Apache, it includes conditions regarding patent defense and 
> notices that are tied directly to the copyright grant. That's "VERY 
> WEAK" but more than CC0.
> 
> As for CC0, I can't think of a better example of "ULTRA-WEAK" given 
> that we're obviously making up the terms as we go. I was initially 
> going to reference CC-BY, but given Apache's reluctance to allow that 
> license I wasn't sure which one was "VERY" and which was "ULTRA". Or 
> why, if the CC-BY license has nothing to do with copyleft, Apache doesn't
like it. Silliness!
> 
> We're inventing these distinctions merely to prevent all these various 
> FOSS works from being combined into aggregates without copyleft worry. 
> This is a waste of great software opportunity.
> 
> /Larry
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Jagielski [mailto:jim at jimjag.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 10, 2015 6:03 AM
> To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com; license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Strong and weak copyleft
> 
> I would even question whether Apache and CCO are really "copyleft" in 
> any way... :)
> 
>> On Apr 9, 2015, at 4:35 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Maybe we can summarize so far:
>> 
>> ULTRA-STRONG		(AGPL)
>> STRONG		(GPL)
>> MORE THAN WEAK	(LGPL)
>> ALMOST WEAK		(EPL)
>> WEAK			(MPL)
>> VERY WEAK		(APACHE)
>> ULTRA-WEAK		(CC0)
>> 
>> This rather simple scale is not reflected in copyright law or any 
>> relevant cases. It is not part of the Free Software Guidelines or the 
>> Open Source Definition. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the 
>> definition of "derivative work." It is based here in this thread on 
>> obscure quotes from various websites or opinions about "license 
>> author's intent" without quoting the actual provisions of the 
>> licenses
> that enable these vague distinctions.
>> 
>> This is one of the issues raised by the VMware complaint in Germany, 
>> and we're expecting a court to make a decision about how strong the 
>> GPL is. This email thread is still not very helpful.
>> 
>> /Larry
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> License-discuss mailing list
>> License-discuss at opensource.org
>> http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discu
>> s
>> s
> 
> _______________________________________________
> License-discuss mailing list
> License-discuss at opensource.org
> http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discus
> s