by Bradley M. Kuhn
on July 23, 2021
Two schools of thought about the purpose of copyleft have been at odds for
some time. Simply put, the question is: are copyleft licenses designed primarily to protect
the rights of large companies that produce electronics and software
products,
or is copyleft designed primarily to protect individual users'
rights to improve, modify, repair, and reinstall their software?
This debate quickly gets deep into complex policy questions. In the last
few years, that general debate has slowly but surely focused almost
entirely on the issue of users' ability to make effective use of FOSS on