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The strength of the copyleft license governing a work is determined by the extent to which its provisions can be imposed on all kinds of derivative works. Thus, the term "weak copyleft" refers to licenses where not all derivative works inherit the copyleft license; whether a derivative work inherits or not often depends on how it was derived.
[74] [32] They are called strong copyleft in contrast to the weaker copyleft licenses often used by corporations. Weak copyleft uses narrower, explicit definitions of derivative works. [75] [35] The MPL uses a file-based definition, the CPL and EPL use a module-based definition, and the FSF's own LGPL refers to software libraries. [76]
The strength of the copyleft governing a work is an expression of the extent that the copyleft provisions can be efficiently imposed on all kinds of derived works. "Weak copyleft" refers to licenses where not all derived works inherit the copyleft license; whether a derived work inherits or not often depends on the manner in which it was derived.
Derived from the Mozilla Public License 1.1, [4] the CDDL tries to address some of the problems of the MPL. [5] Like the MPL, the CDDL is a weak copyleft license in-between GPL license and BSD/MIT permissive licenses, requiring only source code files under CDDL to remain under CDDL.
License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to legally combine source code from separately-licensed software in order to create and publish a new program.
Copyleft licenses (also known as "share-alike"), [46] require source code to be distributed with software and require the source code be made available under a similar license. [48] [49] Copyleft represents the farthest that reuse can be restricted while still being considered free software. [50]
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 27 January 2025. Software licensed to ensure source code usage rights Open-source software shares similarities with free software and is part of the broader term free and open-source software. For broader coverage of this topic, see open-source-software movement. A screenshot of Manjaro linux running the ...
Some licenses are called "copyleft" licenses. Essentially, they have three key properties: A work licensed with a copyleft license can be copied at will. All published derivative works must use exactly the same license as the original: if you use the work, you're forced to use the same license for your own original work as well.