Les communs du logiciel libre : La naissance du commun, le cadre institutionnel

This text is part of a study (Part I) on the phenomenon of free software. Here there is a questioning of the principle of the exclusive right of an author (individual or firm) on his work (the software) and uses thereof. Indeed, free software licenses (BSD, GPL, etc.) give rights of use extended to particular users based on the idea that the programs (source code) are intended to be used, reused, processed and developed by users, which should have, in law and in practice, free access to this code. These licenses have created a kind of common (universal), similar to the public domain, which eventually fall - more later in our time - all works under copyright. The paper analyzes the historical emergence of this common and provides a mapping, in which the copyleft, present in certain licenses, plays a fundamental role in securing the common, by prohibiting any subsequent re-privatization of the source code.