Analysis of the Types of Copyleft (Week 6)

        Most people who spent their time on open-source projects are familiar with the term “copyleft”. This term itself is widely used in many areas; however, some people may not understand what it is. The word copyleft was firstly used in Li-Chen Wang’s Tiny BASIC program in 1976 [1]. It is now mostly known as a way of giving a permit to freely publish and change the source code with condition that those same rights will be maintained in other works that will derive from the original resource [2]. Furthermore, copyleft is a concept that is often used in the details of a particular copyright license [3]. A few of those examples are GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License. In addition, copyleft consists of three different kinds: strong, weak, and no copyleft. Now that we understand what copyleft means, in the following paragraphs I will analyze how these three different types of copyleft can influence one’s project.

1.    Strong Copyleft

            The strong copyleft sets rules such that when the software includes some of the codes in the work of the previous author, then the derived work itself must be released under the same license [4]. As mentioned before, one of the most popular examples of a strong copyleft license is GNU GPL. The approach used in such licensing can influence product security as the source code of the original work will be reviewed and scrutinized several times by thousands or more developers across the world. Additionally, strong copyleft promotes community freedom and creativity as well as synergistic growth among parent and child contributors. This however comes at a cost of capital sacrifice.

[source: https://www.whitesourcesoftware.com/resources/blog/open-source-copyleft-licenses]

2.    Weak Copyleft

            On the other hand, weak copyleft is referred to licenses where only the original applicant for the license holds copyleft status the implication of which mean that contributors to the code or those who borrow the code are free to apply any sort of license on the newly created software and is not subject to the same conditions as the original work. This copyleft type may have effects like “productizing” the original code by adding new codes that will be enclosed and later sold as proprietary software [4]. Eventually, the advantage of weak copyleft is that it would let modifiers of your code hide the parts of their own code which they would not want to reveal to the public.

 

3.    No Copyleft

            No copyleft gives the developers the biggest independence to modify the code as they like and later even release it as proprietary software. This option may also help developers to choose the freedom they want to give to the end-users of their products. Furthermore, this feature can be advantageous to the people who want to start their project based on non-copyleft products.

 

Conclusion

            In conclusion, I have analyzed all three types of copyleft licenses and the ways in which they can impact the projects. The essence of the practice of copylefting is in the spirit of cooperation and collaboration amongst like-minded cyber/computer professionals and/or enthusiasts who understand the importance of cumulative work.

 

 

 

References

[1]	"Copyleft: The rise of open-source software licensing," Snyk, [Online]. Available: https://snyk.io/learn/what-is-copyleft-license/. [Accessed 11 February 2022].
[2]	"What is Copyleft?," GNU Operating System, [Online]. Available: https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/. [Accessed 11 February 2022].
[3]	Copyleft, [Online]. Available: https://copyleft.org/. [Accessed 11 February 2022].
[4]	R. Wilson, "What Kind Of Licence Should I Choose?," OssWatch, [Online]. Available: http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/licdiff#:~:text=Strong%20copyleft%20conditions%20dictate%20that,the%20code%20will%20be%20available.. [Accessed 11 February 2022].