Ethical Concerns about Digital Property: The Case of FLOSS Licenses
Roberto Feltrero · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · 2010
Free software programmers have applied some of the values and principles that belong within the ideal of a pluralistic, transparent and collaborative knowledge society to their technological designs (Feltrero 2007). These principles are implemented by means of the licenses that cover their computer programs and the associated documentation. Such licenses, legally rooted on, and protected by, copyright laws, give the users the right to freely use, copy, study and redistribute the modifications of their software developments, provided that they keep those modifications free. In this way, free software supporters have transformed the usual meaning of copyright laws from the motto “Copyright, all rights reserved” to “Copyleft, all rights reversed.” These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.