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B. Open-Content Licensing: Software
The contemporary peer-production phenomenon began in the software world in the 1970s and 1980s, with later open-content projects modeling themselves on the paradigm established by free and open source software (“FOSS”). Software licensing, accordingly, supplies the logical starting point for an examination of the legal underpinnings of commons-based peer production. Although dozens of standard-form licenses exist for FOSS works, many of them share a common intellectual ancestor: the GNU Project’s celebrated GPL.

1. The GNU GPL and LGPL
In the FOSS world, the GNU GPL is the most widely used license. There have been three versions of the GPL: Version 1, which was