Pejorative term employed by members and
adherents of the GNU project to describe the act of holding
software proprietary, keeping it under trade secret or license
terms which prohibit free redistribution and modification. Used
primarily in Free Software Foundation propaganda. For a summary
of related issues, see GNU.
copyleft /kop'ee-left/ n.
[play on `copyright'] 1. The
copyright notice (`General Public License') carried by GNU
EMACS and other Free Software Foundation software, granting reuse
and reproduction rights to all comers (but see also General Public Virus)....