"Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well"
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
(Taken from the General Public Licence or GNU website)
Copyleft, the opposite of Copyright is the practice of removing copyright laws and restrictions.
Rules of Copyleft
- Freedom to use and study the work,
- Freedom to copy and share the work with others,
- Freedom to modify the work,
- Freedom to distribute modified and therefore derivative works.
With the birth of the World Wide Web came the realisation that through mass co operation, tasks which once seemed impossible are now been broken down and solved and this more than occasionally occurs without the backing of any major corporation or government.
FightAIDS@Home is one example of this. In this project “a global network where millions of individualscomputor users, donates their spare computing power via the internet to form one of the world’s most powerful computing platforms” “that might one day cure AIDS.”
“Wikinomics – How Mass Collaboration Changes everything “- Don Tapscott & Antony Williams.
Tiny BASIC (Programming language) which originated in 1975 and more recently Linux (Operating System – 1991) are both examples of Copyleft.
After reading some of the by now international best selling book “Wikinomics” I understand a little better how ideas like Copyleft can work both financially and morally.
And it is clear, the more people get involved in researching a subject, the better the final outcome.
I think terms like Copyleft will become much more mainstream over the next 10 years.
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