"...In the GNU Project we usually recommend people use copyleft licenses like GNU GPL, rather than permissive non-copyleft free software licenses. We don't argue harshly against the non-copyleft licenses—in fact, we occasionally recommend them in special circumstances—but the advocates of those licenses show a pattern of arguing harshly against the GPL..."

Combining freedoms and copyleft in the Gnu GPL license (invented by Richard Stallman) was the cornerstone of free software. This is now questioned due to the proliferation of incompatible copyleft licenses.

Terry Hancock made a few statements about why developers choose a copyleft licence as did Tony Mobily in his editorial for issue 20. So let me tell you why this developer chose (and continues to choose) a copyleft licence?

"...If middlemen could strip off the freedom, we might have many users, but those users would not have freedom. So instead of putting GNU software in the public domain, we copyleft it. Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom..."

"Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. The simplest way to make a program free software is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their improvements, if they are so minded.

"FSF's John Sullivan will talk about copyleft, copyright, the War on Sharing, and the GNU/Linux free software operating system at the Connecticut Film Festival." -- via Copyleft and the War on Sharing - Free Software Foundation

"...Copyleft is not enough. Free software web services must technologically resist needless centralization of services..."

I was disturbed today to read that Oracle will seek to relicense all OpenOffice code under the Apache-2.0 license and move OpenOffice into the Apache Software Foundation.

[...] However, it's ultimately hypocritical to claim support for a copyleft structure but oppose GPL enforcement. If you believe the license should have a legal requirement that ensures software is always distributed in software freedom, then why would you be surprised — or, even worse, angry — that a copyright holder would seek to uphold users' rights when that license is violated?