Enhancement request: Refine License Category - Copyleft Limited

[mjherzog]

Problem
The current ScanCode/DejaCode License Category of 'Copyleft Limited' is defined as:
"A license that requires you to redistribute source code, including your changes, and also to provide attribution for the software authors. Your obligation to redistribute source code, including proprietary code linked with code under this license, is limited according to license-specific rules."

This category covers two types of Copyleft licenses that are more permissive than the original Copyleft/GPL-based Copyleft category but these types are quite different from a license risk perspective. The two types could be described as:

• Copyleft - Library: where the software unit subject to Copyleft conditions is a library. The most common examples are variants of LGPL and GPL with a Classpath Exception;
• Copyleft - File: where the software unit subject to Copyleft conditions is a file. Common examples, are variants of MPL, EPL and other so-called "public licenses".

Benefits
Many organizations have license usage policies that are distinct for the Copyleft - Library and Copyleft - File types. Replacing the current Copyleft Limited category with these more granular categories should make it much easier to apply basic license usage policies based on License Categories.

Solution
The solution is to update the licenses in the current Copyleft Limited category by:

• Assigning each license to one of the new categories in a test dataspace. There are 330 licenses as of March 9, 2026.
• Communicating the planned change to the ScanCode community. It is important to actually show people the proposed recategorization by license rather than just the concept.
• Planning the implementation with enough lead time to minimize disruption to the ScanCode community.