/kop'ee-left/ (A play on "copyright") The {copyright} notice and {General Public License} applying to the works of the {Free Software Foundation}, granting reuse and reproduction rights to everyone. Typically copyrights take away freedoms; copyleft preserves them.  It is a legal instrument that requires those who pass on a program to include the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code; the code and the freedoms become legally inseparable. The copyleft used by the GNU Project combines a regular copyright notice and the "GNU General Public License" (GPL). The GPL is a copying license which basically says that you have the aforementioned freedoms.  The license is included in each GNU source code distribution and manual. See also {General Public Virus}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-04-18)