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Well, no. You could have a situation where there's a policy in place forbidding installing GPL-licensed products. (I don't have any info about it, but I wouldn'

Well, no. You could have a situation where there's a policy in place forbidding installing GPL-licensed products. (I don't have any info about it, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case at Microsoft a while ago.) EDIT: I'm getting downvotes and don't understand why. I'm seriously interested, can someone explain the reason?

a3_nm 10y ago
That's the fault of the people making that policy, not the fault of the people licensing the code under GPL.
- andrewflnr 10y ago
  Pointing the finger somewhere different doesn't change the practical reality. The only question there is how likely a GPL ban is to actually affect you (seems small to me, to be honest, but I don't know).
  - belorn 10y ago
    If we are talking about probability, I have heard more times that a developer is working in a place which forbids all non-approved software from being installed and used on work computers. One web developer could not even install an alternate web browser to test the code that they wrote. Anything that is not a code snippet that is considered so small as to not be copyrightable was banned. Of course, their market wasn't very competitive and thus they could have such policy without much risk. In more competitive areas like games, companies like blizzard has shown to use any license that is compatible with their business model, and in some cases, directly asked developer for exceptions. In that kind of market, a ideology based policy doesn't work and would only give ground to the competition.
  - EdHominem 10y ago
    If your policy is the bug it doesn't help you if we don't point it out. And, if it does affect you, get a better job. Businesses with stupid policies should fail but there's no reason for them to take you down too.
avmich 10y ago
> You could have a situation where there's a policy in place forbidding installing GPL-licensed products. You might have situation with policies forbidding anything. Like, MS Windows. Or Macs. Or smartphones. Rarely, yes, but I'm surprised GPL looks that unique regarding this matter.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Weird that someone would prohibit installing GPL licenced software. It is a very different case than using GPL licenced code in development. Sounds like a dumb lawyer trying to hard cover his rear against reverse engineering accusations. Which you cannot do in this way anyway.
simoncion 10y ago
> I'm getting downvotes and don't understand why. I'm seriously interested, can someone explain the reason? Probably because your comment is of the form "Well, here's a ridiculously unlikely (as well as patently ridiculous) thing that I'm going to use as a counter to your argument." Preemptive downvoter shield attempt: I'm deliberately taking a very uncharitable view of sandebert's comment in order to answer his question.
- sandebert 10y ago
  Thanks, that could be it, I suppose. But I don't understand why my comment would be considered that ridiculous. I've worked at a company where it was not forbidden, but strongly frowned upon to use open source of any kind ("because we need to be able to keep someone accountable if the software breaks"). And on top of my mind I recall several stories by Patio11 where he talks about trying to get a piece of software in his days as salary man. And getting plain refused from his manager, because the software was way too cheap. Agreed, none of these examples are specifically about GPL, but they would very well cover the statement I responded to: "GPL code can be used anywhere". And just to be super clear: I wasn't trying to make a "cute" comment about a super extreme situation. I was merely trying to present a little more nuance to the statement given.

a3_nm 10y ago

That's the fault of the people making that policy, not the fault of the people licensing the code under GPL.

andrewflnr 10y ago
Pointing the finger somewhere different doesn't change the practical reality. The only question there is how likely a GPL ban is to actually affect you (seems small to me, to be honest, but I don't know).
- belorn 10y ago
  If we are talking about probability, I have heard more times that a developer is working in a place which forbids all non-approved software from being installed and used on work computers. One web developer could not even install an alternate web browser to test the code that they wrote. Anything that is not a code snippet that is considered so small as to not be copyrightable was banned. Of course, their market wasn't very competitive and thus they could have such policy without much risk. In more competitive areas like games, companies like blizzard has shown to use any license that is compatible with their business model, and in some cases, directly asked developer for exceptions. In that kind of market, a ideology based policy doesn't work and would only give ground to the competition.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  If your policy is the bug it doesn't help you if we don't point it out. And, if it does affect you, get a better job. Businesses with stupid policies should fail but there's no reason for them to take you down too.

avmich 10y ago

> You could have a situation where there's a policy in place forbidding installing GPL-licensed products. You might have situation with policies forbidding anything. Like, MS Windows. Or Macs. Or smartphones. Rarely, yes, but I'm surprised GPL looks that unique regarding this matter.

AstralStorm 10y ago
Weird that someone would prohibit installing GPL licenced software. It is a very different case than using GPL licenced code in development. Sounds like a dumb lawyer trying to hard cover his rear against reverse engineering accusations. Which you cannot do in this way anyway.

simoncion 10y ago

> I'm getting downvotes and don't understand why. I'm seriously interested, can someone explain the reason? Probably because your comment is of the form "Well, here's a ridiculously unlikely (as well as patently ridiculous) thing that I'm going to use as a counter to your argument." Preemptive downvoter shield attempt: I'm deliberately taking a very uncharitable view of sandebert's comment in order to answer his question.

sandebert 10y ago
Thanks, that could be it, I suppose. But I don't understand why my comment would be considered that ridiculous. I've worked at a company where it was not forbidden, but strongly frowned upon to use open source of any kind ("because we need to be able to keep someone accountable if the software breaks"). And on top of my mind I recall several stories by Patio11 where he talks about trying to get a piece of software in his days as salary man. And getting plain refused from his manager, because the software was way too cheap. Agreed, none of these examples are specifically about GPL, but they would very well cover the statement I responded to: "GPL code can be used anywhere". And just to be super clear: I wasn't trying to make a "cute" comment about a super extreme situation. I was merely trying to present a little more nuance to the statement given.