Why Copyleft is important for the human species as a whole

Linuxreviews.org GNU Copyleft copyleft is designed for programs, but it can be applied to any type of intellectual property: texts, images, video and other types of works as well. Copyleft ensures knowledge remains a free part of the Commons and is a very effective way to regain control of knowledge and thought which now belonged to private companies.

What is copyright? How Open Source Software is changing Beat Copyright by licence 3.1. The Free software foundation 3.1.1. Copyleft 3.1.2. General Public License 3.2. BSD-style: The "good luck" license 3.3. Private property of Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 v.s. Public

The human species is estimated to have had the same amount of intelligence thousands of 250,000 to 300,000 years. Humans exploited for iron in Afrika approximately 90,000 years, which means that the people of the time had organized enough companies. Yet we know little or nothing about these people today.

Human knowledge has been historically been shared as free as possible. At the great library of Alexandria, it was usually just to copy and distribute the books and other documents. The distribution of art and knowledge is limited to available technology very, very long time.

1. What is copyright?

Then about three hundred years ago the human species between the period of time which began the current unsustainable failure of a society with the industrial revolution. It introduces a fundamental change in the sharing of knowledge: copyright has been introduced.

Copyright allows essentially to real and artificial legal persons, immortal called the Corporations to claim a particular work be intellectual property. The concept of intellectual property is a single entity the right fully to control intellectual work. Thoughts expressed have been put on the market to be sold and purchased as goods and services.

It is good for greedy society and their bottom line, but limits the amount of left of common knowledge in the Commons. Copyright steals the common wealth and the place in the private fortune closed and restricted.

2. How is changing Open Source Software

Open Source Software is licensed in a way that places the property of the source code of software in the Commons. Everyone is allowed to use free software, and anyone with the time and skills can participate in its development. This makes software OSS evolve, because everyone using of it becomes a potential developer. Free software continues to evolve even if the original creator leave the project because anyone can pick up the torch and continue.

3 Fight Copyright by licence

The simplest way to make anything free is to place it in the Public domain. A work is free if the owner of the copyright law says that it is. Most countries have laws which, by default, gives the creator of the copyright, therefore it is the owner of the copyright if it wants to share with the world, or not.

Public domain has a problem: it is allowed to take something in the public domain, edit and claim a Copyright on it. This remains a problem as long that copyright is not abolished for the collective good for all humanity.

The licenses have been introduced to deal with this problem. A jungle of licenses have emerged and they all deal with this slightly differently.

3.1. The Free software foundation

Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use the software in all the ways that are socially useful. Software differs from material objects, such as chairs, sandwiches, and gasoline - it can be copied and changed much more easily. These software opportunities as useful it is. We believe that software users should be able to make use of them.The Free software foundation are the creators of the two most popular licenses used today for the common wealth:

3.1.1. Copyleft

Copyleft is a large license originally designed for software that can be applied to images, text, images and any other work elsewhere. The said license the work is free and must remain free. You can do what you want to work as long as it remains in the Commons. You cannot take a picture of Copyleft and put on a Web site that has a notice of copyright to restrict others to freely use the image, but you can use it if you do not use Copyleft yourself.

Copyleft is also a very good idea for the music. Most so-called "samples" used to create modern music are the property of large companies who insist that you buy their music with a pollutant, non-durable media called DVD disks. Copyleft music can be distributed freely, meaning people will promote your music of bands for the millions of people free of charge for you.

3.1.2. The general public license

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and modify. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software - to ensure that the software is free for all its users.

It is the most open license software is the property of today.

The Linux kernel, the KDE desktop, Gnome desktop, and thousands of other OSS programs are authorized under the general public license. Using the GPL gives creators and the common a better capability to attack successfully greedy corporations who use the code Commons without giving what to return.

View the Original article