Fwd: Do we still need weak copyleft? (was Re: Exceptions to copyleft-next)

[Richard Fontana]

[sorry meant to send this to the list]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 12:39 AM Theodore Tso <tytso at mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 10:25:39PM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > Me too. I've thought for some time that weak copyleft is a failed (or
> > now-irrelevant) paradigm, if only because of the political success of
> > noncopyleft FOSS licenses. There is clearly an audience for copyleft
> > in general, which I think means something like strong (or at least
> > "non-weak" as the copyleft-next README eventually put it) copyleft,
> > but who really wants weak copyleft nowadays?
>
> When you are referring to "weak copyleft", are you referring the
> various "file-based" weak copylefts, such as the MPL, EPL, and CDDL?
> Or are you also including the LGPL?  I agree that the file-based weak
> copyleft licenses aren't particularly interesting at least to me.  But
> library use case is one that I think is still can be relevant today
> and moving forward.

Yeah I guess I wasn't thinking carefully there about the distinction.

When (many years ago now) I referred to copyleft-next as "non-weak"
rather than "strong" I think it was because I was starting to despair
that copyleft-next couldn't be practically implemented in such a way
that a GPL vs LGPL sort of distinction would be meaningful. (I
remember someone playfully accusing me of adopting the views of Larry
Rosen.) However I don't necessarily think that now.

Richard