Copyfree vs Copyleft
From WikiVS, the open comparison website
| Copyfree | Copyleft | |
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| http://copyfree.org | http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ |
Copyfree is a philosophy or policy of assuming the default state of the product of the intellect should be one of freedom to deal with it as one sees fit, implying that you may do what you will with what you have in your possession -- and that the same applies to everyone else.
Copyleft is a philosophy or policy of assuming that the product of the intellect must be spread as broadly as possible, such that distributing the pragmatically useful part of something without also distributing the underlying construction of it is punishable by law.
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[edit] In Their Own Words
[edit] Copyfree
Copyfree is a policy of freedom to copy, use, modify, and distribute what you possess. It is a philosophy that stands in contrast to both copyright and copyleft, in that it does not seek to limit or restrict your rights regarding your possessions at all. Copyfree is not about limited monopoly on the product of the intellect, like copyright; nor is it about dictating terms of redistribution, like copyleft. It is about control over what you possess and allowing others to control what they possess.
[edit] Criteria for Copyfree
The Copyfree Standard specifies that the following criteria must be met:
- Free Use -- A copyfree license does not place any restrictions on the use of the licensed material, and protects recipients of the material from such restrictions except insofar as explicit individual contractual agreements are concerned.
- Free Distribution -- A copyfree license does not place any restrictions on the distribution of the licensed material, and protects recipients of the material from such restrictions except insofar as explicit individual contractual agreements are concerned.
- Free Modification and Derivation -- A copyfree license does not place any restrictions on the modification of -- and derivation from -- the licensed material, and protects recipients of the material from such restrictions except insofar as explicit individual contractual agreements may be concerned.
- Free Combination -- A copyfree license does not place any restrictions on materials outside of the licensed material itself, nor does it explicity limit the licensed materials in combination with materials external to the licensed material.
- Universal Application -- A copyfree license does not place any restrictions on who benefits from the terms of the licensed material, except in the event it specifies provisions to revoke its terms for those found to have violated the copyfree protections of the license. The license is also applicable to recipients of the material distributed under its terms without requiring the execution of any additional license by the distributing and receiving parties.
[edit] Copyleft
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.
[edit] Criteria for Copyleft
In addition to meeting the basic requirements for Free Software, as set forth in the "Four Freedoms", copyleft licenses also meet the both of the following two criteria:
- A copyleft license has strong heritability characteristics. In short, any code that is combined with copyleft code must also be licensed under the same copyleft terms. A license may be considered either "strong copyleft", as in the case of the GPL which requires that even linked libraries must be distributed under the same license, or "weak copyleft", as in the case of the MPL which can coexist with other licenses within the same project (but not the same files).
- A copyleft license must also proactively enforce the GNU project's corollaries to Freedom 1 and Freedom 3, which state "Access to the source code is a precondition for this." When distributing software under the terms of a copyleft license, then, one must distribute not only a binary but also the source code. The reverse, however, is not necessarily true; when distributing source code, one is not required to distribute a binary executable with it. Some software is generally unaffected by this requirement of copyleft licensing, however, because the software is written in a language that is effectively usable only as a file containing source code parsed by an interpreter or JIT compiler when executed.
[edit] Etymology and History
"Copyleft" originated as a play on the term "copyright", suggesting a reversal of the policies embodied by copyright.
"Copyfree" originated as a play on the existence of the terms "copyleft" and "copyright", suggesting a similarity to the political meanings of the terms "left" and "right", and offering a third option.
[edit] The Four Freedoms
The GNU project defines four freedoms that are necessary to define software as "Free Software":
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).
Both copyfree and copyleft licenses comply with all four of these freedoms, in that they do not in any way restrict any of these activities. The GNU project attaches corollaries to Freedom 1 and Freedom 3 (i.e., the second and fourth freedoms, respectively), however, that imply that copyleft licenses are preferable. In each case, the corollary is the same: "Access to the source code is a precondition for this."
That corollary is certainly necessary to practice those freedoms, in most cases: it is quite difficult to study how a program works and adapt it to one's needs without access to the source code; it is similarly difficult to improve the program and release your improvements to the public without access to the source code. The freedoms themselves, however, are not affected by this, as there is a distinct difference between freedom and capability.
It could be argued that copyleft licenses such as the GPL actually violate Freedom 2 (i.e., the third freedom), because by requiring redistribution of source code along with a compiled program through force of law, anyone who does not possess the source code for some reason or does not wish to distribute the source code is thus denied the freedom to redistribute copies of the program. To a lesser degree, the same limitation may apply to Freedom 3 (i.e., the fourth freedom).
[edit] Relationship to the Public Domain
Copyfree licensing roughly approximates the public domain, with the exception that copyfree licensed materials are segregated from copyright. True public domain materials may be copyrighted after modification; the point of copyfree licensing policy is primarily to eliminate that "weakness" in the legal status of the public domain, and secondarily to provide an approximation of the public domain in jurisdictions where one does not have the legal ability to "release" something into the public domain. If copyright law were to vanish tomorrow, while all copyfree licenses would become null and void, the essential distribution terms under law of copyfree licensed materials would not. Copyfree licenses can been described as, to varying degrees, equivalent to a "protected" public domain. Whereas the ability to release something into the public domain before the term of copyright naturally expires is not legally recognized in some jurisdictions, copyfree licensing terms are applicable even within such jurisdictions.
Richard Stallman has stated that, if copyright law did not exist, there would be no need for the GPL or copyleft licensing in general. The terms of the GPL -- the GNU project's flagship license, and the "gold standard" for copyleft licenses -- are dependent upon the existence of copyright law, however. These terms, in fact, directly contradict certain aspects of the natural state of public domain works, in that restrictions on the manner in which one may distribute something subject to the terms of the license are the key characteristics of copyleft policy that differentiate it from copyfree policy.
[edit] Popularity
The concept of copyleft licensing has been around for a long time. Some of the most popular open source development projects employ copyleft licenses:
- the Linux kernel (GPL)
- Mozilla Firefox (MPL, GPL and LGPL)
- OpenSolaris (CDDL)
While copyfree licenses have been around longer than copyleft licenses such as the GPL, the copyfree label and the concept of copyfree policy has been explicitly articulated only relatively recently. As a result, while copyfree licenses are very widely used, the copyfree concept is not nearly as well known at this time. Some venerable, popular open source development projects employ copyfree licenses:
- Apache Web server (Apache license)
- BSD Unix systems, including FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD (BSD and ISC licenses)
- OpenSSH (BSD license)
- OpenSSL (OpenSSL license)
- X.org (MIT license)
[edit] Business Use
Copyleft and Copyfree licenses tend to have very different relationships with businesses and business use.
Copyleft licenses -- especially the GPL -- attract attacks from certain corporations, drawing such epithets as "viral" for their heritability characteristics and "communist" for their required sharing characteristics. Such corporations also sometimes refer to copyleft licenses as simply anti-business because the use of copyleft licensed materials in development of new works may legally prohibit the use of a corporation's intended business model.
Other corporations, meanwhile, have actually found ways to use copyleft licensing terms to monkeywrench the competitive capabilities of other business organizations, maintaining a one-sided advantage to the use of the licensed code. These techniques typically involve the careful separation of open and closed source code within the organization, which maintains copyright for all the relevant code. This allows it to garner the benefits of open source development for certain components of a system while keeping others under wraps as trade secrets, and simultaneously encourages would-be competitors to conform to a specific baseline set of common characteristics so they are less likely to produce a significantly different and innovative work from scratch.
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