Law Commons^™

Whither (Not Wither) Copyleft, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

This article contains an edited version of Professor Eben Moglen’s speech at the SFLC Fall Conference 2016. It explores the topic of Copyleft, enforcement and community engagement from the perspective of one of the key individuals in the rise of Free and Open Source Software from interesting idea to a central pillar of the global technology industry.

How Copyleft Uses License Rights To Succeed In The Open Source Software Revolution And The Implications For Article 2b, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

The computer industry moves from one “next great thing” to the next “next great thing” with amazing speed. Graphical user interface, object-oriented programming, client-server computing, multimedia software, Java applets, the network computer, and the Internet have all been hailed as technological breakthroughs at one time or another. Some of these promising developments fizzle, some evolve and succeed slowly, and some revolutionize the industry overnight.

Led by a group of software developers known as “hackers,” the latest “next great thing” is “open source” software. The word “source” refers to software in source code form. Source code is the collection of instructions …