Clarification on copyleft-next 0.3.1

[Richard Fontana]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2026 at 12:38 AM <zenort at tutamail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello
> I have Some question about copyleft-next 0.3.1 can anyone please clarify .
> 1.Has there been an attempt to get FSF , OSI , Debian DFSG approval for copleft-next 0.3.1 license  ?

FSF: The FSF does not AFAIK "approve" licenses, but it has classified
some licenses as free and non-free. I am not aware of any statement
made by FSF about copyleft-next 0.3.1.

OSI: Some years ago the idea of submitting copyleft-next 0.3.1 to the
OSI occurred to me, and I remember raising the topic on the
predecessor mailing list, but there didn't seem to be much interest
and I didn't proceed (possibly in part because I may have been an OSI
board director at that time, but I don't really remember offhand when
this was). Anyway, no, OSI has not reviewed any version of
copyleft-next.

Debian: Well, implicitly I believe Debian considers copyleft-next
0.3.1 to be DFSG-conformant, because software covered by copyleft-next
0.3.1 is in the Debian main package repository. I don't believe there
is any other manifestation of "approval" of a license in Debian.

> 2. How does copyleft-next deal with network software or saas software ?

copyleft-next 0.3.1 and earlier releases do not deal with it at all.

The latest (now very old) "draft" of copyleft-next, however, does deal
with it. See: https://git.copyleft.org/copyleft-next/copyleft-next/src/branch/main/Drafts/copyleft-next#L90-L98

> 3.Is the copyleft sunset section accepted in many/most countries?

Not sure what you mean by "accepted". I have no reason to think it
wouldn't work as intended in any particular country.

Note that the copyleft sunset provision was discussed a bit on this
mailing list last year, and the consensus seemed to be that it was a
bad idea, so I don't think it will be in future versions of
copyleft-next.

> 4. Why is the definitions placed in section 15 ? Should it not be in section 1 instead of being in section 15 for comprehensive ability/ readability ?

There have been some versions where the definitions are at the
beginning. I had a colleague at Red Hat who liked to put definitions
at the end -- they argued that this made the document more readable --
and at the relevant time this made an impression on me. In my
experience, in US legal contracts, if there is a definitions section
it's typically at the beginning, but putting them at the end is not
some outlandish or radical practice. I don't know of any other FLOSS
license that puts definitions at the end. Future versions of
copyleft-next, assuming they have a definitions section, may very well
put them in the beginning.

Richard