Communications of the ACM
ACM Opinion
What Motivates Free Software Licencing Decisions?
Credit: OpenSource.com
Free software licenses can be divided into two broad categories: copyleft licenses (like the GPL), which require derivatives of the software to be licensed under the same terms; and permissive licenses (like the MIT/X11 license), which allow the software to be reused in any project, even closed-source projects. The licenses express a difference in opinion about free-riding and user rights.
Implicitly, however, the licenses also reflect a particular view about fairness: a sense that it is wrongful for others to take from the commons without sharing in turn.
From OpenSource.com
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