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GPL is cancer, but in a good way.
by caskance 11y ago
GPL is cancer, but in a good way.
- donatj 11y agoI have misgivings about GPL. It's given me a lot, and I appreciate that, but while developing I won't use GPL libraries because I simply don't like being told what to do, and per the golden rule, I don't like telling people what to do, so I cannot with good moral standing release GPL code.
- Spivak 11y agoLibraries? Most of those are licensed under the LGPL precisely that reason.
- donatj 11y agoThe vast majority of my code is either in scripted uncompiled form, or statically linked. Wordpress implied a while back that using uncompiled GPL libraries made your code GPL. I'm no license expert, I'd rather just not risk it.
- gillianseed 11y agoWell in the case of GPL, what you are not allowed to do is to use GPL licensed code with yours and decide not to give recipients of the resulting code the same rights that you were given. I personally think that makes for a decent 'moral standing'. Basically GPL only a problem if you want to create proprietary software, which in turn is typically very much a 'being told what you can do with said software' type of situation, with no code and often incorporating DRM mechanisms to prevent copying.
- teddyh 11y agoIf you “don’t like telling people what to do”, you must be licensing all your code as CC0 or public domain, right?
- donatj 11y agoSome public domain, mostly MIT. All MIT really asks is to give me credit if they use my code.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoThe more commonly used term is viral, which these days, I think captures the can-be-the-right-choice/can-be-the-wrong-choice nature, while still saying it spreads to most things it touches.