Bulba! wrote:
On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 08:39:11 GMT, Roel Schroeven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
That's generally the goal of the Free Software Foundation: they think all users should have the freedom to modify and/or distribute your code.
You have the freedom of having to wash my car then. ;-)
A more accurate analogy would be, "You're free to borrow my car, but if you do, you must wash it and refill the gas tank before you return it."
Note that the so-called 'viral' nature of GPL code only applies to *modifications you make* to the GPL software. The *only* way in which your code can be 'infected' by the GPL is if you copy GPL source.
Given the standard usage of closed-source software, you never even have access to the source. If you use GPL software in the same way that you use closed-source software, then the GPL cannot 'infect' anything you do.
The 'infective' nature of the GPL *only* comes when you make use of the *extra* privelidges that open source grants. So yes, those extra privelidges come with a price (which is that you share what you've done); but if you don't want to pay that price, you have the choice of not using those privelidges. This does not, in any way, prevent you from using GPL'ed software as a user.
(Problems may come if someone licenses a library under the GPL; that's what the LGPL was invented for. But the issue here is not that the GPL is bad, it's that the author used the wrong form of it.)
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the GPL. I'm much more likely to use BSD-ish licenses than [L]GPL. But it still bugs me to see the GPL misrepresented as some plot to steal the effort of hardworking programmers -- it is, instead, an attempt to *encourage* hardworking programmers to share in a public commons, by ensuring that what's donated to the commons remains in the commons.
Jeff Shannon Technician/Programmer Credit International
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