COPYLEFT

Impact of choosing different forms of copyleft

Copyleft (the opposite of copyright) goes hand in hand with free software and open source licences. Basically, it impacts us secondarily when developing software derivatives.

We can classify it into two types of copyleft:

- Strong copyleft: the ideal copyleft for people who are only in the business of using the software, the end users. For developers, creators of software derivatives are bound by the rules imposed by the software licence itself, such as retaining the same licence as the original software and not being able to appropriate the derivative in its entirety. This makes it difficult to integrate these derivatives into different software, especially with proprietary softwares.

The most significant example for this type of copyleft would be the GNU GPL licence, created in 1989 and with its other versions that came later, with their own freedoms and rules within the strong copyleft.

- Weak copyleft: as the name indicates, it is a little freer than strong copyleft. You still have to retain the licence on the derivatives but there are "fewer licence rules", making it easier to integrate these derivatives with other softwares. Within this type are usually libraries used to create code for projects, in this case when the software is ready, the library will not show the licence under which it is created.

An example would be Mozilla Public license (MPL) which apart from being in this category, has proprietary elements inside.

Finally we could highlight the non-copyleft, which as you can already guess are completely free software, perfect for developers who want to create their own software without retentions having absolute freedom for its derivatives. On the other hand, it would negatively affect end users, who could be left without software due to lack of support.

One of the most significant examples of this category would be the apache licence where different projects such as Apache Web Server or VLC have been created.

What kind of copyleft licence is ideal for the creation of a project?

Well, it depends a lot on the final purposes of the developer himself. The one that gives you more freedom is the non-copyleft, being able to create derivatives and privatise it for yourself. But of course you don't have as many softwares to choose from as in weak and strong copyleft. It all depends on your project.

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