Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Libre Licensing

💡 In simple words: All of WikiDeal's software and writing is free for everyone to use and share. Nobody can lock it away or make it secret.

🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): Systematic Libre Licensing means free/libre licences everywhere, by default, since the beginning: GNU AGPL v3 for software, CC BY-SA 4.0 for content. The licences are exactly those of the Free Software Foundation: libre in the pure sense, not merely open source. The aim is an environment of transparency: no technological backdoor, no partial privatization, no "half-free" trap, a radically non-discriminatory choice, with mechanisms progressively installed to guarantee free access to the contents, including the contracts.

Systematic Libre Licensing

Innovation, WikiDeal R&D

Origin	🔴 Free Software Foundation
Status	Deployed (100 percent since the beginning; July 2026, proposal)

What is it?

Systematic Libre Licensing means that WikiDeal uses free/libre licences everywhere, by default, with no exceptions, and has done so since the beginning:

• GNU AGPL v3 for all software;
• CC BY-SA 4.0 for all content.

The licences are exactly those of the Free Software Foundation: libre in the pure sense of the free software definition, not merely open source. The same standard applies to content, aligned with the Creative Commons culture of shareable, remixable works.

Libre versus open source

The free software movement (Free Software Foundation, 1985) frames software freedom as an ethical and social question: the freedom to use, study, share and improve. The later open source movement (1998) reframed the same practices as a development method, putting the ethical dimension aside; the Free Software Foundation has documented why, in its view, open source misses the point. A fuller account is given in the history of free and open-source software.

WikiDeal stands on the libre side of this history. The risks it intends to avoid are the "half-free" traps:

• merely open source models, where openness can coexist with proprietary extensions, closed cloud services or open-core strategies;
• non-commercial or restricted-field licences (such as CC non-commercial variants), which discriminate between users and uses.

The choice stays radically non-discriminatory: the same freedoms for everyone, for any purpose, guaranteed by copyleft so that derivative works remain libre.

The Research Focus

The debate on software licenses themselves is definitively closed; no new research is being conducted to reinvent the wheel regarding 100% Free Software. However, the new applied research focus of WikiDeal is entirely dedicated to answering a different question: how can we systematically apply these exact same free licenses (such as CC BY-SA) to the domain of commerce?

Specifically, the research explores how contract models, legal clauses, and business texts—which have historically been privatized and enclosed by lawyers and large corporations—can be shared as open, reusable commons.

For the philosophical context of this approach, see the Intention and Vision (Research Motto).

The culture behind the choice

Beyond the legal texts, this is a culture and a state of mind, drawing on the writings and practice of the Free Software Foundation and of Creative Commons: transparency as the default, cooperation over enclosure, and the conviction that shared resources stay healthy when nobody can lock them away.

Intended impact

The aim is an environment of transparency:

• no technological backdoor: with AGPL v3, anyone can study the code actually running the platform;
• no partial privatization: copyleft prevents proprietary capture of the commons, even in case of forks;
• no dependence on the goodwill of a single owner: the community can always continue the work.

Progressive guarantee mechanisms

Mechanisms are progressively installed to guarantee free access to the contents, including the contracts: publication under CC BY-SA 4.0, versioned public histories, and creative clauses intended to allow healthy relations and the recreation of trust between parties. The same care applies to the security and privacy of user data: private data (identity, contract variables, personal details) stays private by default and under user control, while the reusable commons (contract bases, published statistics) stays libre by design.

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Related scientific research

Systematic libre licensing rests on a founding literature about free software, free culture and the economics of open source. The works below are the reference texts of that tradition.

• Richard M. Stallman (2002), Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays, GNU Press: free full text · book page on Wikipedia.
• Lawrence Lessig (2004), Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, Penguin Press: book page on Wikipedia.
• Yochai Benkler (2002), Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm, Yale Law Journal, 112(3): doi:10.2307/1562247 · commons-based peer production on Wikipedia.
• Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole (2002), Some Simple Economics of Open Source, Journal of Industrial Economics, 50(2): doi:10.1111/1467-6451.00174.
• Eric S. Raymond (1999), The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, O'Reilly Media: book page on Wikipedia.

See also: Licensing and credits · Collaborative Contract Editing · All innovations · R&D Portal