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(efaq)Real meaning of copyleft

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What is the real legal meaning of the GNU copyleft?
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   The real legal meaning of the GNU General Public License (copyleft)
will only be known if and when a judge rules on its validity and scope.
There has never been a copyright infringement case involving the GPL to
set any precedents.  Please take any discussion regarding this issue to
the newsgroup `news:gnu.misc.discuss', which was created to hold the
extensive flame wars on the subject.

   RMS writes:

     The legal meaning of the GNU copyleft is less important than the
     spirit, which is that Emacs is a free software project and that
     work pertaining to Emacs should also be free software.  "Free"
     means that all users have the freedom to study, share, change and
     improve Emacs.  To make sure everyone has this freedom, pass along
     source code when you distribute any version of Emacs or a related
     program, and give the recipients the same freedom that you enjoyed.