Constitutional affairs legal affairs
partment C: Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs
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- ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 6 An introduction to the most used FOSS license
- 1 THE GPL AND COPYLEFT
Policy Department C: Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 6 An introduction to the most used FOSS license: the GNU GPL license Dr. Eben Moglen, JD and Ian Sullivan, Columbia Law School ABSTRACT The public drafting and discussion of GPLv3 in 2006-07 was a landmark in non- governmental transnational law-making. Free and open source software production communities are held together by copyright licensing, as are free cultural production communities like Wikipedia. Their efforts to improve those licenses—to increase their utility in multiple legal systems, to take account of technical and economic changes in the field, and to increase their efficiency of operation and enforcement—are among the most important examples of genuinely democratic, participatory law-making that we have experienced so far in the 21st century. CONTENT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6 1 THE GPL AND COPYLEFT 7 2 CREATING VERSION THREE OF THE GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE (GPLV3) 8 3 THE PUBLIC CONSULTATION 9 4 THE DRAFTS 11 CONCLUSION 12 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The public drafting and discussion of GPLv3 in 2006-07 was a landmark in non- governmental transnational lawmaking. Free and open source software production communities are held together by copyright licensing, as are free cultural production communities like Wikipedia. Their efforts to improve those licenses—to increase their utility in multiple legal systems, to take account of technical and economic changes in the field, and to increase their efficiency of operation and enforcement—are among the most important examples of genuinely democratic, participatory law-making that we have experienced so far in the 21st century. In the interest of improving both the European Parliament’s access to the details of this particular process, and to assist it in self-scrutiny, with respect to its extraordinary consistency in missing its opportunities in this area, Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) submits the records of this process, which it assisted its client, the Free Software Foundation, to design and execute. 1 1 While this 19 month transnational consultation process operated entirely on Free Software, the procedures of this Parliament require the use of proprietary document production tools and formats in order to discuss it on the public record. This document is the closest approximation to those formats that can be produced using internationally recognized standard formats and Free Software document production tools that are available to all Workshop: Legal aspects of free and open source software ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 7 1 THE GPL AND COPYLEFT The GPL is the world's most widely used Free Software licence. 2 The Free Software Foundation, the founders of the Free Software movement, defines free software as: [S]oftware that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. 3 The GPL preserves these freedoms for its users through a series of requirements in the licence. Originally designed for use in the GNU project to build a fully free computer operating system, these licence requirements are collectively referred to as “Copyleft”. The GNU project's explanation of Copyleft follows. 1.1. What is Copyleft? 4 Copyleft 5 is a general method for making a program free software and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free software as well. The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain , 6 uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their improvements, if they are so minded. But it also allows uncooperative people to convert the program into proprietary software . 7 They can make changes, many or few, and distribute the result as a proprietary product. People who receive the program in that modified form do not have the freedom that the original author gave them; the middleman has stripped it away. In the GNU project , 8 the aim is to give all users the freedom to redistribute and change GNU software. If middlemen could strip off the freedom, there might be many users, but those users would not have freedom. So, instead of putting GNU software in the public domain, it has been “copylefted”. Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom. Copyleft also provides an incentive 9 for other programmers to add to free software. Important free programs (such as the GNU C++ compiler) exist only because of this. Copyleft also helps programmers who want to contribute improvements 10 to free software 11 get permission to do that. These programmers often work for companies or universities that would do almost anything to get more money. A programmer may want to contribute his/her changes to the community, but her employer may want to turn the changes into a proprietary software product. When the employer is told that it is illegal to distribute the improved version except as free software, the employer usually decides to release it as free software rather than throw it away. To copyleft a program, it is first stated that it is copyrighted; then, distribution terms are added, which are a legal instrument that gives everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's code or any program derived from it but only if the distribution terms are unchanged. Thus, the code and the freedoms become legally inseparable. EU citizens. The requirement to use proprietary fonts, formats and tools in discussing EU free and open source software policy is a testament to the incoherence of that policy. 2 http://osrc.blackducksoftware.com/data/licenses/ . 3 Emphasis original, from The Free Software definition - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html . 4 Text of this section is taken almost verbatim from the Free Software Foundations' licence description text, which is available at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ . 5 See https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html . 6 See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#PublicDomainSoftware . 7 See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#ProprietarySoftware . 8 See https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html . 9 See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html . 10 See https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html#HelpWriteSoftware . 11 See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html . Yüklə 228,85 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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