5 ms·

Taint is pejorative. Why must you choose negative terms to describe copyleft? Words matter, and words like "taint" and "viral" have been chosen for the purpos

Taint is pejorative. Why must you choose negative terms to describe copyleft? Words matter, and words like "taint" and "viral" have been chosen for the purpose of harming copyleft's reputation.

reitanqild 10y ago
Kind of agree. But what do you call it that describes it in a non-pejorative way? I am thankful for GPL and GPL-ed sw. I just find some of the advocacy for it a bit annoying.
ThrowawayR2 10y ago
> Why must you choose negative terms to describe copyleft? Because there's an unfortunate kernel of truth to it? From the standpoint of people using any other license, copyleft code (intentionally) causes an undesirable side effect of attaching its license terms to your code base if the slightest bit of it is merged in, whether through a developer's carelessness, ignorance, or otherwise. And the effects may not be noticed for quite some time. It takes vigilance and developer education to prevent this from happening. One struggles to think of a term that doesn't have pejorative connotations to describe this effect. I have yet to see anyone suggest a credible alternative. (And please don't suggest "protective"; that's so transparently doublespeak that it's surprising that it ever took off. Things that are protective don't just reach out and latch onto other things they are accidentally brought into contact with.) EDIT: minor rewording for clarity
- Nursie 10y ago
  You make it sound like the code does this itself! It doesn't reach out, it grants you a ton of rights in exchange for you preserving those rights downstrea. in projects you use it in. If that is not a good tradeoff for you, don't use it. You make it sound like an active, infectious agent.
  - ThrowawayR2 10y ago
    You do bring up a good point and I've adjusted the wording to reflect that active agency (i.e. a developer) is involved. Nevertheless, as I pointed out in an earlier post, quite a number of developers are not educated in the specifics of open source licenses or IP law or even simply don't care and this can cause problems in codebases that aren't copyleft licensed.
    - Nursie 10y ago
      Yes, this is something I've seen around quite a lot. There's some just don't know, some take the attitude "it's on the net so I can use it" and then I've encountered people who are scared into going to the other extreme - linux is GPL therefore we have to release our software product on BSD if we don't want to open source the whole thing! Some of the big corporates are quite hot on education in this area, but their actual FOSS-related proceses can be byzantine and weird.

Taint is pejorative. Why must you choose negative terms to describe copyleft? Words matter, and words like "taint" and "viral" have been chosen for the purpose of harming copyleft's reputation.

reitanqild 10y ago

Kind of agree. But what do you call it that describes it in a non-pejorative way? I am thankful for GPL and GPL-ed sw. I just find some of the advocacy for it a bit annoying.

ThrowawayR2 10y ago

> Why must you choose negative terms to describe copyleft? Because there's an unfortunate kernel of truth to it? From the standpoint of people using any other license, copyleft code (intentionally) causes an undesirable side effect of attaching its license terms to your code base if the slightest bit of it is merged in, whether through a developer's carelessness, ignorance, or otherwise. And the effects may not be noticed for quite some time. It takes vigilance and developer education to prevent this from happening. One struggles to think of a term that doesn't have pejorative connotations to describe this effect. I have yet to see anyone suggest a credible alternative. (And please don't suggest "protective"; that's so transparently doublespeak that it's surprising that it ever took off. Things that are protective don't just reach out and latch onto other things they are accidentally brought into contact with.) EDIT: minor rewording for clarity

Nursie 10y ago
You make it sound like the code does this itself! It doesn't reach out, it grants you a ton of rights in exchange for you preserving those rights downstrea. in projects you use it in. If that is not a good tradeoff for you, don't use it. You make it sound like an active, infectious agent.
- ThrowawayR2 10y ago
  You do bring up a good point and I've adjusted the wording to reflect that active agency (i.e. a developer) is involved. Nevertheless, as I pointed out in an earlier post, quite a number of developers are not educated in the specifics of open source licenses or IP law or even simply don't care and this can cause problems in codebases that aren't copyleft licensed.
  - Nursie 10y ago
    Yes, this is something I've seen around quite a lot. There's some just don't know, some take the attitude "it's on the net so I can use it" and then I've encountered people who are scared into going to the other extreme - linux is GPL therefore we have to release our software product on BSD if we don't want to open source the whole thing! Some of the big corporates are quite hot on education in this area, but their actual FOSS-related proceses can be byzantine and weird.