- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@hsivonen.fi>
- Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 08:45:50 +0300
- To: Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com>
- Cc: "public-restrictedmedia@w3.org" <public-restrictedmedia@w3.org>
On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote: > I think the distinction of importance here when it comes to Open > Source licenses is whether the freedom to modify the software is one > of the freedoms that must be passed on to downstream users of the > software (as opposed to being a freedom granted to the first recipient > only). > > What is the correct term to distinguish licenses which do and do not > require that ? The term is “strong copyleft”. Examples include GPLv2 and GPLv3. (Due to network effects, it doesn’t really make sense to launch non-GPL strong copyleft licenses, though niche ones probably exist.) The qualifier “strong” is needed to distinguish from the likes of MPL and LGPL that are “copyleft” but only “weak copyleft” because their copyleft doesn’t apply to the whole piece of software when code licensed under them is combined with other code. Code that’s under MPL could potentially be used in a Hollywood-compatible CDM. However, LGPLv3 section 4d and LGPLv2.1 sections 6a and 6b would probably conflict with Hollywood-compatible Robustness Rules. MIT, BSD and Apache licenses are “non-copyleft”. -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@hsivonen.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Thursday, 6 June 2013 05:46:23 UTC