Re:Theo de Raadt on LLVM license change
by Koshkin on Saturday October 01, 2016 @03:15PM
(#12619425)
> Free software still maintains copyright
Otherwise known as "copyleft", which means that everyone has the right to copy; it, moreover, demands that this right to copy may not be infringed upon by alteration of the software. There is no trace of the originally intended meaning of the word "copyright" in there; if anything, it's just its opposite.
Not all free software licences are copyleft licenses. While the GNU GPL is a very well known and widely used example, it is by far not the only free software licence. The Apache 2.0, MIT, BSD and other commonly used licenses are free software licenses because they provide the recipient the four essential freedoms. Copyleft is not mentioned in the free software definition[1]. It's mentioned as an optional way to license free software works.
In addition, even with copyleft every contributor has copyright over their changes. The crucial part of the copyleft hack is that it requires that distributing derived software must be done under the same license. You may choose to not distribute the software, and then the GNU GPL doesn't require you to do anything.
Software is not a physical thing, so it's not clear who is the "owner" of the work. If you buy a book, you are the owner of the book but are not the copyright holder. In a similar fashion, if you buy (or download) some software, you are the owner of the software but are not the copyright holder. So free software does not proclaim that ownership is evil, it just states that all users should have rights that people have had throughout history when it comes to similar intstructional works such as recipies.
Also the idea that software is a form of "free speech" does not come from the free software movement. I think you're getting confused, and would recommend reading the GNU website[1] to better understand precisely what free software refers to.
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html