Copyleft licenses, particularly the GPL and LGPL, are widely used throughout the Free Software community. Over the last few years, recent debates have led many to various conclusions about the popularity of copyleft. This talk will discuss where copyleft stands today, how it interacts with the modern Free Software world, and how copyleft advocates may need to adapt to the future of Free Software licensing.
Copyleft licenses, particularly the GPL and LGPL, are widely used throughout the Free Software community. However, recent for-profit corporate interest in Free Software development has led to a renewed preference toward non-copyleft licensing by for-profit entities. Meanwhile, many for-profit entities that do use copyleft for their own software now do so in a manner that most copyleft aficionados find, at best, distasteful and at worst, abusive.
A long-standing truce exists in our community between fans of non-copyleft licensing and copyleft. No one in the copyleft communities disputes that non-copylefted Free Software is an important part of our community. However, copyleft faces new challenges that make past debates about the appropriateness of copyleft seem quite minor by comparison.
This talk will discuss all aspects of the complicated situation facing copyleft, including younger developers apparent preference for non-copyleft licensing (as expressed, in part, in the "post-open source" debates), the widespread and common failures for companies to comply with GPL's relatively easy requirements, and how licensing choices are today, unlike in the past, rarely in the hands of individual developers, but instead their corporate employers.
Speakers: Bradley M. Kuhn