copyleft

legal /kop'ee-left/ (A play on "copyright") The copyright

notice and General Public License applying to the works of

the Free Software Foundation, granting reuse and

reproduction rights to everyone.

Typically copyrights take away freedoms; copyleft preserves

them. It is a legal instrument that requires those who pass

on a program to include the rights to use, modify, and

redistribute the code; the code and the freedoms become

legally inseparable.

The copyleft used by the GNU Project combines a regular

copyright notice and the "GNU General Public License" (GPL).

The GPL is a copying license which basically says that you

have the aforementioned freedoms. The license is included in

each GNU source code distribution and manual.

See also General Public Virus.

[Jargon File]

(1995-04-18)