104 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
104 lines
5 KiB
Markdown
copyleft.org
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============
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## What is Copyleft?
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Copyleft is a strategy of utilizing copyright law to pursue the policy goal
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of fostering and encouraging the equal and inalienable right to copy, share,
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modify and improve creative works of authorship. Copyleft (as a general
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term) describes any method that utilizes the copyright system to achieve the
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aforementioned goal. Copyleft as a concept is usually implemented in the
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details of a specific copyright license, such as the GNU
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[General Public License (GPL)](http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) and the
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[Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
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Copyright holders of creative work can unilaterally implement these licenses
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for their own works to build communities that collaboratively share and
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improve those copylefted creative works.
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## What is copyleft.org?
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copyleft.org is a collaborative project to create and disseminate useful
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information, tutorial material, and new policy ideas regarding all forms of
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copyleft licensing.
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This site itself is licensed under a copyleft license, and has received
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contributions from experts around the world. Thus, copyleft.org is the
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premier "meta-project" of copyleft: it's useful copylefted information all
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about copyleft itself!
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### The Copyleft Guide and Tutorial
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The primary project currently on this site is a tutorial book entitled
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[*Copyleft and the GNU General Public License: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Guide*](/guide/).
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This guide describes the policy motivations for copyleft, presents a detailed analysis of the text of
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various copyleft licenses, and gives examples and case studies of copyleft compliance situations.
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### Getting Involved
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There are various ways to get involved with this project. The primary
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copyleft.org website is a wiki, and we welcome helpful edits and additions.
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For the aforementioned guide and tutorial about GPL and other copyleft concepts,
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we seek help in the following ways:
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#### Proposing Improvements to the Guide
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[Merge requests on copyleft.org's gitorious site](https://gitorious.org/copyleft-org/tutorial/merge_requests)
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to the Guide are most welcome. If you're looking for something to fix, just
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grep the *.tex files for "FIXME" and you'll find plenty. Many of them are
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simple and easy to do. Some of them are writing, and some of them are
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formatting-related.
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#### Joining Mailing Lists
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* Subscribe to our low-traffic [announcements-only mailing list](https://lists.copyleft.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/announce).
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* Join discussion on our [primary mailing list, called "discuss"](https://lists.copyleft.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss).
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#### IRC Discussion
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The coypleft.org
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[IRC channel is #copyleft on irc.freenode.net](irc://irc.freenode.net/#copyleft).
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The [IRC logs are public here on this site](/irclogs/).
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### Who Contributes to copyleft.org?
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This site is a joint project of
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[Software Freedom Conservancy](https://sfconservancy.org/news/2014/nov/07/copyleft-org/) and the
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[Free Software Foundation](http://www.fsf.org/news/software-freedom-conservancy-and-free-software-foundation-announce-copyleft.org). The editor-in-chief of
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[the guide](/guide/) is [Bradley M. Kuhn](http://ebb.org/bkuhn). The
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[recent changes page](/recentchanges) shows who has
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contributed to the wiki, and you can see the
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[Git commit log on the tutorial](https://gitorious.org/copyleft-org/tutorial/commits/)
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to see who has contributed to it, and
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[[see the list of users who contribute to this Wiki|users]].
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### URLs You Can Memorize!
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copyleft.org has many easy-to-remember URLs. These are convenience URLs that
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you can memorize and give to people verbally to point them to the right part
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of [The Guide](https://copyleft.org/guide/). (Since the guide is very large,
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we thought a few easy-to-remember ways to tell people where to look would be
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helpful.) Here are the primary ones:
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* [copyleft.org](https://copyleft.org) points to this page.
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* [copyleft.guide](http://copyleft.guide) points to the guide itself.
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* [compliance.guide](http://compliance.guide) points to the *GPL Compliance Guide* section of the full Guide.
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* [gpl.guide](http://gpl.guide) points to the *Detailed Analysis of the GNU GPL and Related Licenses* section of the full Guide.
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As time goes on, we'll add convenience URLs to refer to specific parts of the
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guide, which makes it easy to refer people to portions of the Guide. Here
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are a the ones that exist so far:
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* [compliance.guide/pristine](http://compliance.guide/pristine) points to
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the "pristine example", the chapter entitled *ThinkPenguin Wireless Router: Excellent CCS*.
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### Offsite Resources
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#### More on: "What Is Copyleft?"
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Here are a few external resources to read regarding the general concept of copyleft:
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* [Richard M. Stallman's essay on copyleft at gnu.org](https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/)
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* [The Wikipedia entry on Copyleft](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft)
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(The definition of copyleft at the top of this page is modified version
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of the first paragraph of that Wikipedia entry).
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