Media

In media, which includes textual, audio and visual content, free licensing schemes such as some of the licenses made by Creative Commons have allowed for the dissemination of works under a clear set of legal permissions. Not all of the Creative Commons’ licenses are free: their permissions may range from very liberal general redistribution and modification of the work to a more restrictive redistribution-only licensing. Repositories that exclusively feature free material provide content such as photographs, clip art, music and literature[4].

Software

Free software, often referred to as open source software, is a maturing technology with major companies utilising free software to provide both services and technology to both end users and technical consumers. The ease of dissemination has allowed for increased modularity, which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying collaboration.

Academia

In academic work, free works are still a niche phenomenon, owing to the difficulty of establishing a fully qualified peer review process. Authors may see open access publishing as a method of expanding the audience that is able to access their work to allow for greater impact of the publication[5][6]. Such difficulties notwithstanding, groups such as Public Library of Science still provide capacity for review and publishing of free works. In traditional journals, alternatives such as delayed free publications are occasionally used. Some funding agencies require academic work to be published in the public domain as a grant requirement[7]. Open content publication has been seen as a method of reducing costs associated with information retrieval in research, as universities typically pay to subscribe for access to content that is published through traditional means[8].

Criticism

Main article: Copyleft
A subset of free licenses are sometimes referred to as viral copyright licenses, this applies to licences that contain a clause stating that any works derived from a free work must themselves be free when distributed, usually under the same licence. This requirement is criticized as legally constraining and therefore rendering the use of the "free" appellation inappropriate.
An example of one of these "viral licences" is the GNU General Public Licence, which is often applied to computer programs. The viral nature of these licences are seen as applying the ideology of the original licensor on subsequent redistributors.

References

1.^ Richard Stallman (2008-03-20). "Free Software and Free Manuals". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved on 2008-08-08.
2.^ Nate Anderson (2008-07-16). "EU caves to aging rockers, wants 45-year copyright extension if the copyright law changes.". Ars Technica. Retrieved on 2008-08-08.
3.^ Eric S. Raymond. "Copycenter". The Jargon File. Retrieved on 2008-08-09.
4.^ "Gutenberg:No Cost or Freedom?".
5.^ "Trends in Self-Posting of Research Material Online by Academic Staff".
6.^ "JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey" (PDF).
7.^ "NHMRC Partnership Projects - Funding Policy" (PDF).
8.^ "Libraries face higher costs for academic journals".