Viral license

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Viral license is an alternative name for copyleft licenses, especially the GPL, that allows derivative works only when permissions are preserved in modified versions of the work. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Copyleft licenses include several common open-source and free content licenses, such as the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA).

Contents

Scope

The term is most often used to describe the GPL, [7] [5] [6] which requires that any derivative work also be licensed under compatible licenses with the GPL. The viral component is described as such because the licenses spreads a continuing use of the licenses in its derivatives. [8] The "virality" can force a license change of free software, e.g. when software is derived from two or more sources having incompatible viral licenses in which the derivative work could not be re-licensed at all. [7]

Although the concept is generally associated with licenses that promote free content, some have attempted to compare it to the proprietary original equipment manufacturer source code software distribution agreements which grant licensees the right to redistribute copies of the software, but restrict what terms can be in the end user license agreement. [9] Such licenses could be considered viral if they led derivative or connected software to gain the same license.

As an example of viral licensing outside software, after it was revealed that French author Michel Houellebecq plagiarized sections of Wikipedia articles in his novel La Carte et Le Territoire , some commentators said that this automatically made his entire book licensed under the CC BY-SA Attribution and ShareAlike license. [10]

History

The term 'General Public Virus' or 'GNU Public Virus' (GPV) as a pejorative name dates back to a year after the GPLv1 was released. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] In 2001 Microsoft vice-president Craig Mundie remarked "This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it." [17] In another context, Steve Ballmer declared that code released under GPL is useless to the commercial sector (since it can only be used if the resulting surrounding code becomes GPL), describing it thus as "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches". [18] In response to Microsoft's attacks on the GPL, several prominent Free Software developers and advocates released a joint statement supporting the license. [19]

Criticism of the term

According to Free Software Foundation compliance engineer David Turner, the term viral license creates a misunderstanding and a fear of using copylefted free software. [20] David McGowan has written that there is no reason to believe the GPL could force proprietary software to become free software, but could "try to enjoin the firm from distributing commercially a program that combined with the GPL'd code to form a derivative work, and to recover damages for infringement." If the firm "actually copied code from a GPL'd program, such a suit would be a perfectly ordinary assertion of copyright, which most private firms would defend if the shoe were on the other foot." [21] Richard Stallman has described this view with an analogy, saying, "The GPL's domain does not spread by proximity or contact, only by deliberate inclusion of GPL-covered code in your program. It spreads like a spider plant, not like a virus." [22]

Interoperability

Popular copyleft licenses, such as the GPL, have a clause allowing components to interact with non-copyleft components as long as the communication is abstract,[ failed verification ] such as executing a command-line tool with a set of switches or interacting with a Web server. [23] As a consequence, even if one module of an otherwise non-copyleft product is placed under the GPL, it may still be legal for other components to communicate with it normally[ clarification needed ]. This allowed communication may or may not include reusing libraries or routines via dynamic linking — some commentators say it does, [24] the FSF asserts it does not and explicitly adds an exception allowing it in the license for the GNU Classpath re-implementation of the Java library.

The interoperability clauses are often pragmatically inoperative due to the vigorous enforcement and strict interpretation of the GPL as it related to integration, aggregation, and linking. It is argued that most forms of incorporation, aggregation, or connectivity with GPL-licensed code is a derivative work that must be licensed under the GPL. In recent years, a number of communities using GPL-incompatible licenses have dropped efforts and support for interoperability with GPL-licensed products in response to this trend. Some developers and communities have switched to the GPL or a GPL-compatible license in response, which critics and supporters alike agree is intentional result. [ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, is termed free software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Lesser General Public License</span> Free-software license

The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own software without being required by the terms of a strong copyleft license to release the source code of their own components. However, any developer who modifies an LGPL-covered component is required to make their modified version available under the same LGPL license. For proprietary software, code under the LGPL is usually used in the form of a shared library, so that there is a clear separation between the proprietary and LGPL components. The LGPL is primarily used for software libraries, although it is also used by some stand-alone applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source license</span> Software license allowing source code to be used, modified, and shared

Open-source licenses facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source software licenses use these existing legal structures for the inverse purpose of granting freedoms that promote sharing and collaboration. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These licenses target computer software where source code can be necessary to create modifications. They also cover situations where there is no difference between the source code and the executable program distributed to end users. Open-source licenses can cover hardware, infrastructure, drinks, books, and music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apache License</span> Free software license developed by the ASF

The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software under the terms of the license, without concern for royalties. The ASF and its projects release their software products under the Apache License. The license is also used by many non-ASF projects.

The Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) is a free and open-source software license, produced by Sun Microsystems, based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under other licenses, whether open source or proprietary. In 2005 the Open Source Initiative approved the license. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) considers it a free software license, but one which is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses used, e.g. dual-licensed for software licensed under two different licenses.

A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be used, modified, and redistributed, usually including a warranty disclaimer. Examples include the GNU All-permissive License, MIT License, BSD licenses, Apple Public Source License and Apache license. As of 2016, the most popular free-software license is the permissive MIT license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eclipse Public License</span> Free software license similar to the Common Public License

The Eclipse Public License (EPL) is a free and open source software license most notably used for the Eclipse IDE and other projects by the Eclipse Foundation. It replaces the Common Public License (CPL) and removes certain terms relating to litigations related to patents.

This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.

The Affero General Public License is a free software license. The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002, and based on the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2). The second version (AGPLv2) was published in November 2007, as a transitional license to allow an upgrade path from AGPLv1 to the GNU Affero General Public License.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Union Public Licence</span> Free software license

The European Union Public Licence (EUPL) is a free software licence that was written and approved by the European Commission. The licence is available in 23 official languages of the European Union. All linguistic versions have the same validity. Its latest version, EUPL v1.2, was published in May 2017. Revised documentation for v1.2 was issued in late‑2021.

License proliferation is the phenomenon of an abundance of already existing and the continued creation of new software licenses for software and software packages in the FOSS ecosystem. License proliferation affects the whole FOSS ecosystem negatively by the burden of increasingly complex license selection, license interaction, and license compatibility considerations.

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. Proprietary licenses are generally program-specific and incompatible; authors must negotiate to combine code. Copyleft licenses are commonly deliberately incompatible with proprietary licenses, in order to prevent copyleft software from being re-licensed under a proprietary license, turning it into proprietary software. Many copyleft licenses explicitly allow relicensing under some other copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses are compatible with everything, including proprietary licenses; there is thus no guarantee that all derived works will remain under a permissive license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Affero General Public License</span> Free software license based on the AGPLv1 and GPLv3

The GNU Affero General Public License is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the Affero General Public License.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free-software license</span> License allowing software modification and redistribution

A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms.

BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system. The original version has since been revised, and its descendants are referred to as modified BSD licenses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyleft</span> Practice of mandating free use in all derivatives of a work

Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, freedoms refers to the use of the work for any purpose, and the ability to modify, copy, share, and redistribute the work, with or without a fee. Licenses which implement copyleft can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works ranging from computer software, to documents, art, scientific discoveries and even certain patents.

The GNU General Public License is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. These GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Free Documentation License</span> Copyleft license primarily for free software documentation

The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

Software relicensing is applied in open-source software development when software licenses of software modules are incompatible and are required to be compatible for a greater combined work. Licenses applied to software as copyrightable works, in source code as binary form, can contain contradictory clauses. These requirements can make it impossible to combine source code or content of several software works to create a new combined one.

References

  1. ↑ "Microsoft license spurns open source – CNET News". News.cnet.com. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  2. ↑ Geere, Duncan (16 December 2011). "Some rights reserved: the alternatives to copyright (Wired UK)". Wired UK. Wired.co.uk. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  3. ↑ "Glossary". A2Knetwork.org. Archived from the original on 26 April 2009. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  4. ↑ "Inoculating Your Purchase – Contractual Protection from Viral Licenses in M&A Transactions" (PDF). Friedfrank.com. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 October 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  5. 1 2 Steve Nightingale; Philip Wood; Andrew Matangi; Amy Ryburn; Aisling Weir & Allan Yeoman (16 March 2015). "Legal update on Information and Communication Technology – July 2013". Archived from the original on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 4 February 2017. The principal fear relating to using OSS arises from a concept known as 'copyleft' (as in the opposite of copyright), which arises in some – though not all – OSS licences. More pejoratively known as 'viral' licences, copyleft licences (the most well-known of which are the GPLv2 and its successor GPLv3)
  6. 1 2 New Media Rights (12 September 2008). "Open Source Licensing Guide". California Western School of Law . Retrieved 28 November 2015. The GPL license is 'viral,' meaning any derivative work you create containing even the smallest portion of the previously GPL licensed software must also be licensed under the GPL license.
  7. 1 2 Nikolai Bezroukov (2000). "Comparative merits of GPL, BSD and Artistic licences (Critique of Viral Nature of GPL v.2 – or in Defense of Dual Licensing Idea)". Archived from the original on 22 December 2001. Viral property stimulates proliferation of licenses and contributes to the "GPL-enforced nightmare" – a situation when many other licenses are logically incompatible with the GPL and make life unnecessary difficult for developers working in the Linux environment (KDE is a good example here, Python is a less known example).
  8. ↑ Golden, Bernard (2005). "3". Succeeding with Open Source . Addison-Wesley. p.  44. ISBN   978-0-321-26853-2.
  9. ↑ Meeker, Heather J. (2008). "2". The Open Source Alternative. John Wiley and Sons. p. 11. ISBN   978-0-470-19495-9.
  10. ↑ "French Author Plagiarizes Wikipedia; Does That Mean His Entire Book Is Now CC Licensed?". Techdirt.com. 29 November 2010. Retrieved 30 May 2015.
  11. ↑ Vixie, Paul (6 March 2006). "Re: Section 5.2 (IPR encumberance) in TAK rollover requirement draft". IETF Namedroppers mailing list. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 29 April 2007.
  12. ↑ "General Public Virus". Jargon File 2.2.1. 15 December 1990. Retrieved 29 April 2007.
  13. ↑ Hackvän, Stig (September 1999). "Reverse-engineering the GNU Public Virus – Is copyleft too much of a good thing?". Linux Journal . Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 29 April 2007.
  14. ↑ Stewart, Bill (8 October 1998). "Re: propose: 'cypherpunks license' (Re: Wanted: Twofish source code)". Cypherpunks mailing list. Archived from the original on 29 May 2007. Retrieved 29 April 2007.
  15. ↑ Buck, Joe (10 October 2000). "Re: Using of parse tree externally". GCC mailing list. Retrieved 29 April 2007.
  16. ↑ Griffis, L. Adrian (15 July 2000). "The GNU Public Virus" . Retrieved 29 April 2007.
  17. ↑ Mundie, Craig (3 May 2001). "Speech Transcript – Craig Mundie". New York University Stern School of Business. Archived from the original on 21 June 2005. Retrieved 23 August 2008.
  18. ↑ Newbart, Dave (1 June 2001). "Microsoft CEO takes launch break with the Sun-Times". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 15 June 2001.
  19. ↑ Free Software Leaders Stand Together  – via Wikisource.
  20. ↑ Byfield, Bruce (29 August 2006). "IT Manager's Journal: 10 Common Misunderstandings About the GPL" . Retrieved 23 August 2008.
  21. ↑ David McGowan (2005), "Legal Aspects of Free and Open Source Software", in Joseph Feller; Brian Fitzgerald; Scott A. Hissam; Karim R. Lakahani (eds.), Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, MIT Press, p. 382, ISBN   0-262-06246-1
  22. ↑ Poynder, Richard (21 March 2006). "The Basement Interviews: Freeing the Code" . Retrieved 5 February 2010.
  23. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses". Free Software Foundation. 24 June 2008. Retrieved 23 August 2008.
  24. ↑ Raymond, Eric Steven (9 November 2002). "Licensing HOWTO" . Retrieved 21 March 2010.
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