Impact of the copyleft on choosing a software license for one's project (Week 6)

Photo 1: Copyleft logo [1]
The easiest way to make a program free is to declare it public property, revoking your copyright. This will allow others to share the program and its enhancements if they so desire. The impact of this is incommensurable and provides many benefits.

For example,

  • Project development within a community for improved efficiency
  • Software program updates taken care of by others
  • Technological bugs and advancements discovered by active users
  • Removal of legal boundaries for more creative discoveries
  • Customizable software tailored for specific user needs


Strong copyleft

The most well known free software license that uses strong copyleft is the GNU General Public License. Strong license is also Design Science License that can apply to art, music, sports photography and video. [2]

Weak copyleft

Weak copyleft licenses are mostly used for software libraries by allowing links to other libraries (GNU Lesser General Public License). Most important users of weak copyright are Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. [2]

No copyleft

Examples of non-copyleft free software licenses include the X11 license, Apache license and the BSD licenses. The X11 licence is used by the X Window System. [3]

To sum up, I believe that the all listed advantages above of the copyleft are important for developers and for project creativity and progress by other people with diffrent ideas and sights.


References:

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