What impact does the copyleft have on choosing a software license for one's project? (Week 6)

Copyleft licenses stand in contrast to permissive licenses, which tend to have few restrictions on use of the licensed code. They also don’t have any such code-sharing requirement, so the “open source-ness” does not necessarily persist to the derivative work. That is a feature or a bug, depending on how you look at it.


Picture 1: Copyleft All Wrongs Reversed :D [1]

Strong Copyleft:
Under a strong copyleft license like GPL, if you redistribute a program that includes GPL code written by others, you must make your entire program available under GPL. That includes any linked libraries or other components of the program. This is a crucial point for any software development projects in view of the strategies that should be considered and employed. Examples of licenses that fall into this category include GPL v2 and GPL v3, as well as the Affero GPL License (AGPL).


Weak Copyleft:
Weak copyleft licenses also obligate users to release their changes. However, this requirement applies to a narrower set of code. Unlike strong copyleft, the viral effect under weak copyleft is limited only to the FOSS component and does not spread beyond. This makes it possible that other components are added or linked to the weak copyleft FOSS component without them being affected.The Mozilla Public License 2.0 is an example of a weak copyleft license that illustrates this principle. In addition to that, this license allows developers and companies to use and integrate the software component released by LGPL into their software without the need to publish the source code of their components under a strict copyleft license. However, any developer who modifies an LGPL component must make its modified version available under the same LGPL license.
Picture 2: Mozilla Public License [5]
              

No copyleft:
These licenses essentially give the license complete discretion on how to distribute improvements and derivatives, or whether to distribute them at all. The licensee is permitted to re-license these derivatives in any manner, including under a royalty-bearing license. Most common non-copyleft licenses are Apache License Version 2.0, BSD license, MIT license.
Picture 3: Apace License [6]




References:
https://fullmetallinux.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/copyleft-all-wrongs-reserved/ [1]
https://thecybergarden.com/the-concept-of-copyleft-in-open-source-software-licensing/ [2]
https://www.legal.io/articles/5170736/Open-Source-Software-a-legal-guide [3]
https://kbdeveloper.qoppa.com/copyleft-versus-non-copyleft-licenses-in-free-open-source-software/ [4]
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/FAQ/ [5]
https://ubiq.co/tech-blog/increase-request-timeout-apache/ [6]

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