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copyleft is a the practice of offering people the right to freely distribute copies and modified versions of a work with the stipulation that the same rights be preserved in derivative works down the line.
 
Under copyleft, an author may give every person who receives a copy of the work permission to reproduce, adapt, or distribute it, with the accompanying requirement that any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same licensing agreement.
 
Let's start with a simplified copyleft definition, based on the one found on Wikipedia:
 
What is Copyleft?
 
Copyleft is a strategy of utilizing copyright law to pursue the policy goal of fostering and encouraging the equal and inalienable right to copy, share, modify and improve creative works of authorship.  Copyleft (as a general term) describes any method that utilizes the copyright system to achieve the aforementioned goal.  Copyleft as a concept is usually implemented in the details of a specific copyright license, such as the GNU [General Public License (GPL)](http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html) and the [Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Copyright holders of creative works can unilaterally choose these licenses for their own works to build communities that collaboratively share and improve those copylefted creative works.
 
 What is copyleft.org?
 
copyleft.org is a collaborative project to create and disseminate useful information, tutorial material, and new policy ideas regarding all forms of copyleft licensing. This site itself is licensed under a copyleft license, and has received contributions from experts around the world. Thus, copyleft.org is the premier "meta-project" of copyleft: it's useful copylefted information all about copyleft itself!
 
The Copyleft Guide and Tutorial
 
The primary project currently on this site is a tutorial book entitled [*Copyleft and the GNU General Public License: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Guide*]. This guide describes the policy motivations for copyleft, presents a detailed analysis of the text of various copyleft licenses, and gives examples and case studies of copyleft compliance situations.
 
Getting Involved
 
There are various ways to get involved with this project.  The primary copyleft.org website is a wiki, and we welcome helpful edits and additions. For the aforementioned guide and tutorial about GPL and other copyleft concepts, we seek help in the following ways:
 
Proposing Improvements to the Guide [Pull requests on copyleft.org's Kallithea site](https://k.copyleft.org/guide/pull-request) are most welcome. If you're looking for something to fix, just grep the *.tex files for "FIXME" and you'll find plenty.  Many of them are simple and easy to do.  Some of them are writing, and some of them are formatting-related.
 
Joining Mailing Lists
 
   * Subscribe to our low-traffic [announcements-only mailing list](https://lists.copyleft.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/announce).
 
   * Join discussion on our [primary mailing list, called "discuss"](https://lists.copyleft.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss).
 
IRC Discussion
 
The copyleft.org
 
IRC channel is #copyleft on irc.freenode.net(irc://irc.freenode.net/#copyleft).
 
The IRC logs are public here on this site(/irclogs/).
 
Who Contributes to copyleft.org?
 
This site is a joint project of [Software Freedom Conservancy](https://sfconservancy.org/news/2014/nov/07/copyleft-org/) and the [Free Software Foundation](http://www.fsf.org/news/software-freedom-conservancy-and-free-software-foundation-announce-copyleft.org).  The editor-in-chief of the guide is Bradley M. Kuhn (http://ebb.org/bkuhn).  The recent changes page (/recentchanges) shows who has contributed to the wiki, and you can see the Git commit log on the tutorial (https://k.copyleft.org/guide/changelog)to see who has contributed to it, and see the list of users who contribute to this Wiki. Copyleft.org may be sponsored by various organizations, and organizations may also republish some, or all, of the output of this project under the terms of the CC BY-SA license.  However, contributors' work is their own, and thus the opinions expressed in their contributions, IRC utterances, commit messages mailing list posts, and/or other fora provided by copyleft.org may not necessarily reflect the views of the contributors' employers and/or organizations sponsoring the project and/or organizations republishing copyleft.org's materials.  Generally speaking, unless stated otherwise, please assume that individuals contribute to copyleft.org in their personal capacity.
 
URLs You Can Memorize!
 
copyleft.org has many easy-to-remember URLs.  These are convenience URLs that you can memorize and give to people verbally to point them to the right part of The Guide (https://copyleft.org/guide/).  (Since the guide is very large, we thought a few easy-to-remember ways to tell people where to look would be helpful.)  Here are the primary ones:
 
  * [copyleft.org](https://copyleft.org) points to this page.
 
  * [copyleft.guide](http://copyleft.guide) points to the guide itself.
 
  * [compliance.guide](http://compliance.guide) points to the *GPL Compliance Guide* section of the full Guide.
 
  * [gpl.guide](http://gpl.guide) points to the *Detailed Analysis of the GNU GPL and Related Licenses* section of the full Guide.
 
As time goes on, we'll add convenience URLs to refer to specific parts of the guide, which makes it easy to refer people to portions of the Guide.  Here are the ones that exist so far:
 
  * [compliance.guide/pristine](http://compliance.guide/pristine) points to the "pristine example", the chapter entitled *ThinkPenguin Wireless Router: Excellent CCS*.
 
  * [compliance.guide/offer-for-source](http://compliance.guide/offer-for-source) points to the section regarding using the offer for source provisions in GPLv3§6(c) and/or GPLv2§3(b).
 
Offsite Resources
 
More on "What Is Copyleft?" 
 
Here are a few external resources to read regarding the general concept of copyleft:
 
  * [Richard M. Stallman's essay on copyleft at gnu.org](https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/)
 
  * [The Wikipedia entry on Copyleft](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft) (The definition of copyleft at the top of this page is a modified version of the first paragraph of that Wikipedia entry).
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