I have just submitted the abstract for my presentation at Open Source Days 3-4 October 2008 here in Copenhagen:

Applied Copyleft



by Martin von Haller Groenbaek

The arguable most discussed aspect of open source licensing is that of copyleft. In certain situations the use of open source code will have the effect that the licensee is obligated to allow other access to licensee’s own code under the same open source license terms. However important copyleft is to the promotion of open source both as ideology and as business model, the concept is ingenious but also highly complex and often difficult to apply in concrete situations.



This presentation goes beyond the theory of copyleft to address applied copyleft. In particular the following often questions are addressed. When is code modified to an extent that the code is consider a derived work covered by the copyleft provision? When does linking between different classes of code create an entire work that will have to be released under an open source license with a copyleft provision. When is a work distributed, propagated or conveyed with the result that the obligation to release the code under the copyleft license is triggered? Are copyleft provisions enforceable? How will they be enforced and by whom. To what extent can non-compliance with copyleft provisions lead to the payment of damages or other types of compensation and who are the claimants to be compensated? What are the differences between the application of copyleft in GPL v.2 and v.3 and in other hereditary open source licenses?


Anyone with comments or suggestions as to what i should cover in this presentation?

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copyleft, hereditarylicense