Adonay Felipe Nogueira

*Copyfarleft*: Progress or retrogress?

Adonay Felipe Nogueira at

After reading the publication that originated this comment, please, continue reading.

I have already seen this scene a long time ago, but I decided to investigate before saying something without proofs.

After reading the definition of copyfarleft in the articles indicated by the links of the publication I'm answering to, I searched for academic articles related to the same subject, and also for the opinion of activists and non-activists of the free software movement.

According to the copyfarleft movement, the licenses which follow this movement must allow commercial redistribution only if the redistributor is a company or collective "owned by workers", in the other cases, the commercial redistribution must be forbidden.

Passing very quickly through the page about various licenses and their compatibility with the licenses published by the Free Software Foundation, it's possible to note similar licenses, such as: JSON License; Microsoft Shared Source CLI, C#, and Jscript License; and University of Utah Public License.

Note that these similar licenses that I have cited are all incompatíble, be it with the GNU GPL, with the GNU FDL, with the GNU AGPL, and with the GNU LGPL, and following the structure of the page, are categorized as non-free licenses.

Furthermore, free software can be "sold" (read the article of this link, which explains this possibility with more details, including the reason for the quotes).

As I previously said, I looked, and continue looking, for opinions. Besides, I found a similar discussion on Reddit.

I think that the copyfarleft movement presents an injustice for those who wish to commercially redistribute some functional data, since, besides trying to restrict who can or cannot do so, it would be needed to define, in each jurisdiction, what would be a "company owned by workers" and a "collective owned by workers", besides having to define the "worker".

So, what's your opinion on this subject?

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