2015 YIR: Bradley M. Kuhn Speaks About Future of Copyleft

by Bradley M. Kuhn and Karen M. Sandler on December 12, 2015

[ This is a blog post is the second in our series, Conservancy 2015: Year in Review ]

Thanks to the generosity of the LinuxConf Australia (LCA) organizers, who funded both Karen's and Bradley's visit to LinuxConf AU 2015, both were able to attend and speak at LCA 2015. Yesterday, our Year In Review post included a video of Karen Sandler's talk at LCA 2015. Today's video shows Bradley M. Kuhn's talk, Considering the Future of Copyleft: How Will The Next Generation Perceive the GPL?, which was delivered on 15 January 2015.

Copyleft licenses, particularly the GPL, are widely used throughout the Open Source and Free Software communities. Recent debates have led many to various conclusions about the popularity of copyleft. This talk discusses where copyleft stands today, how it interacts with the modern Free Software world, and how copyleft advocates may need to adapt to the future of Free Software licensing.

Specifically, Bradley gives a historical perspective of how the Open Source and Free Software communities perceive copyleft now, and why they do. He discusses what challenges this history leaves for the current situation in software freedom politics. Told with examples from his own twenty years of work in our community, Bradley describes the political challenges facing copyleft and what we as a community should do about it.

Bradley will premiere a follow-up talk to this one, entitled Copyleft For the Next Decade: A Comprehensive Plan at LinuxConf Australia 2016.

This video is also available on on Youtube and in as a direct download in webm format.

Tags: conservancy, GPL, Year In Review 2015

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