Talk:Copyleft

from talk:Free software

According to wikipedia 'copyleft' was coined by Don Hopkins and not Richard Stallman. The Free software and the Copyleft articles now disagree with eachother. --arcade

This could be tough to sort out -

The Origin and Practice of "Copyleft" - http://www.olypen.com/harmon/fdl/copyl.htm -

"Transcopyright: Pre-Permission for Virtual Republishing" by Theodor Holm Nelson - http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/transcopyright/transcopy - (says "the terms "shareware" and "copyleft," declared by Bob Wallace and Richard Stallman respectively, have come to represent their respective permission doctrines, both [are] now widely accepted and used.")

Both of those attributions are wrong. "Shareware" predates Wallace as well--I know that I personally saw the term applied to, for example, things like ARC (the original pre-Phil Katz version) long before Wallace's PCWrite. Both should, however, be credited with refining and popularizing the terms. --LDC

and none of this has anything to do with viral licenses, which apply as much to patents or to music as to software.

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It was coined by Don Hopkins without question, then popularized by Stallman. Stallman says so himself on his website. --AxelBoldt

correct, Don Hopkins wrote it on an envelope - "copyleft: no rights reserved". Don validates the story - I heard it from him firsthand.

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I redirected viral license to this article. There were a couple of things wrong with that article (http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Viral_license&oldID=42717): First, it mentioned trademark and patent law, but viral licenses don't exist in that realm. Second, it was blatantly non-NPOV, in that it called viral license "desirable and popular" and used the phrase "degrade to an open source project", making the additional mistake of assuming that open source projects cannot be copylefted. AxelBoldt, Tuesday, April 2, 2002

"it mentioned trademark and patent law, but viral licenses don't exist in that realm." This is false. You have clearly not researched the subject. MIT and the Government of China both employ viral patent licenses requiring reliable favorable terms for re-licensing improvements to works they license.

That is not viral. It would be viral if they required improvements to be licensed under the same terms that they originally licensed their patents under. What you describe is just a regular deal: I give you something, if you do something useful with it, you need to give it to me cheap. No virus whatsoever. How about a similarly mistaken trademark example? AxelBoldt

" it was blatantly non-NPOV, in that it called viral license "desirable and popular" and used the phrase "degrade to an open source project", making the additional mistake of assuming that open source projects cannot be copylefted." This is your ideological problem. Viral licenses such as the MIT and Chinese and GNU license are all quite popular, and must be considered desirable by *someone* or they wouldn't be. If you want it clarified to whom it is desirable or popular, fine, but destroying the article over that issue amounts to vandalism.

if you call something "desirable" even though even in the hacker community there's a lot of debate about its merits, let alone in the software industry at large, you have to face your own biases. Viral licenses are not popular, except in a small segment of society. You are smart enough to see through your "must be considered desirable by someone or they wouldn't be", so I don't need to comment. The V-word doesn't help your case in any way. AxelBoldt

"open source projects cannot be copylefted" - if they could, they would be "free software projects" or "free source projects" - a much more specific designation that includes by definition the viral terms. It is your own confusion of copyleft and viral license terms that is causing the problem.

Look up the open source definition and the approved licenses, you will find GPL. AxelBoldt

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Copyleft is not the same as viral. The LGPL is a copyleft license that is not viral: all derivatives of the work must be free, but they can be combined with non-free works. GPL is both copyleft and viral, all derivatives, and anything which they are combined must be free (hence, viral, because it attaches itself to the larger project). So, if a library is GPL'ed, then any program that calls it must be free. If it is LGPL'ed, non-free stuff can use it. DanKeshet, Tuesday, April 2, 2002

Only derivative works of GPL'd works fall under GPL. You can "combine" GPL code with anything, but if the combination constitutes a derivative work, then you'll have to GPL the whole code. The LGPL explicitly allows certain derivative works to be non-LGPL. In that sense, LGPL is "less copyleft" and also "less viral" than GPL. AxelBoldt

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Agreed, copyleft is not the same as viral. That's why "viral license" was a separate article. Many patent and trademark licenses by consortia etc. are viral too. DanKeshet is right that GPL is "both copyleft and viral", and makes no reference to patents, e.g. does not require re-integration of patentable improvements, nor trademarks, e.g. does not require crediting GNU in its name, as per Stallman's absurd complaint that this "should" happen for Linux after 20 years of never so requiring such "trademark-like" recognition.

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Suggestion for a breakdown:

copyleft more or less as is

free_software redirects to free source

forget that right now. Don't make up new terms that nobody uses. AxelBoldt

Stallman himself has referred to documentation and code jointly as "source", and http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_1/mann/ seems to demonstrate that in Axel's view, Steve Mann is "nobody". I'm tired of your propaganda, Axel, it doesn't seem to be leading anywhere in particular. Stick to math please, you seem to understand that.

free_source deals with both documentation and software and mentions patents and other instructions - there are already GPL'd patents - see openpatents.org

there are no GPL'd patents, because the concept doesn't make any sense. Read openpatents.org again. AxelBoldt

It's you who doesn't seem to want to read: "Raph Levien has licensed his patents for GPL use." http://www.openpatents.org/patents/ 15 are listed.

A new thing called the OPL will be a viral license written properly for patents based on patent pool models.

Nope, he was right the first time; the GPL is a copyright license, and only a copyright license. What Mr. Levein has done is to issue a patent license of his own that basically says "You may use these patented techniques to create software, so long as that software's copyrights are released under the GPL". The rest of the patents on openpatents.org are released under the "OPL" patent license. --LDC

open_source contrasted with free source - the guarantee of "free" ensured by viral_license terms that "open" does not required

viral_license characterized more generally as the broad class of licensing terms e.g. in the Java or X11 consortium licenses which control those trademarks, e.g. in the IBM or MIT or Chinese govt patent licensing terms, e.g. in openpatents.org, e.g. in trade union use of instructions and training programs which usually require re-integration of improvements, e.g. in service licenses which require non-solicitation for competing services through the service itself, all of which seem to guarantee:

1. equal unharassed use for dedicated users of the service/license/patent/trademark/copyright who are not seeking an advantage for themselves at the cost of the other users, e.g. by extending "open source" and then patenting the extension, e.g. by bugging yahoo users with spam for hotmail.

2. a common simple procedure for extending/improving and re-integrating work, e.g. the Java or X11 compatibility tests.

3. an added-value market for features that do not affect interoperability, e.g. as in IP.

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Maybe we can talk ere about the Free Art License : http://artlibre.org/licence.php/lalgb --Nÿco

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Comment on first paragraph:

"Copyleft refers to a concept [...] to ensure perpetual availability to the public of a certain piece of information [...]"

This is not a very good definition of Copyleft, nor of a Free Software License: the above statement describes something akin to the Apple License, or the Plan 9 license, whereby modifications to the source code are required to be published, infringing the freedom of an end-user from modifying code for private use.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine

permission to modify?

- ND

You don't need permission: be bold in updating pages. It seems to me that you are right; this should be rephrased somewhat. AxelBoldt 17:47 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)

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I removed some material which sounded to me like bullshit, including the following:

some who opposed genetically modified food suggest that if some entity (Earth, its biosphere, or "Mother Nature") or a foundation representing same, were recognizing as holding a copyright in the genome of each naturally-evolved species, then all minor genetic modifications of same would be 'derivative works'.

I don't doubt that someone has suggested this somewhere, but the chances of "Mother Nature" being recognized as a holder of copyrights are unlikely, approaching zero. Until the person who added this can supply credible references, it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. -- CYD