copyleft
Safeguard articles tagged "copyleft" — guides, analysis, and best practices for software supply chain and application security.
35 articles
What Are the Different Types of Licenses in Software? A Security View
The different types of licenses in software fall into a few families - permissive, copyleft, weak copyleft, and proprietary - and each carries distinct legal and supply chain obligations.
Open Source Licensing Models Explained: Permissive, Copyleft, and Compliance Risk
Open source licensing models fall into a few families with very different obligations. Here is how permissive, copyleft, and source-available terms affect your compliance.
OSS License Types Explained and Their Compliance Risks
A field guide to OSS license types, from permissive MIT and Apache to copyleft GPL and AGPL, and the obligations each one puts on the code you ship.
The GPL License Explained: What It Means for Software Security
A practitioner's walkthrough of what the GPL license actually requires, why it matters for your dependency tree, and how it intersects with software security and compliance.
GNU GPL Explained: Versions, Obligations, and Compatibility
GPLv2 vs GPLv3, what the copyleft obligation actually requires, why 'GPLv2 or later' matters, and which licenses you can and cannot combine with the GPL.
The GNU General Public License, Explained in Plain Terms
A GPL license explained without legal jargon: what copyleft actually requires, when it triggers, and what it means for a codebase that links against GPL-licensed code.
Software License Types: The Complete Guide
Permissive, copyleft, proprietary, and public domain: how the main software license types differ, what each one obligates you to do, and how to pick one for your project.
Open Source Licenses Explained: A Practical Primer
Open source licenses explained for engineers who need to make a compliance call today, not read a legal treatise — permissive, copyleft, and what actually changes your obligations.
Software Licenses Explained: A Practical Guide for Engineering Teams
Software licenses fall into a few clear buckets — permissive, copyleft, and proprietary — and knowing which is which decides what you can legally ship. Here is the map, without the legalese.
The AGPL-3.0 License, Explained
AGPL-3.0 is the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 — GPLv3 with one added clause that closes the SaaS loophole, requiring source disclosure even when software is only used over a network, never distributed.
What is License Scanning
License scanning finds every open source license in your dependency tree before it becomes a legal or compliance problem — here's how it works and why it changed in 2024.
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