4 ms·

There is no such thing as a "licensing infection", licenses being inert documents...

• user5994461 9y ago
  Unless the document has a close saying everything it touches gets infected.
  • cyphar 9y ago
    The GPL does not use the word "infect" in any of its versions or related licenses. You're just projecting your biases onto an inert legal document, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of copyleft.
    • user5994461 9y ago
      Legal documents have real life implications, calling it inert is just project a fantasy of yours that they are papers with no consequences.
      • cyphar 9y ago
        That's not what I was saying, I was responding to a statement about documents "infecting" one another which is clearly incorrect. But even if I _had_ said that, you're still not correct. In a contractual agreement, the legal document _itself_ is not what has the "power" in the agreement -- the agreement is what matters. To whit, contract law applies in cases where legal documents are not actually written down (you can even have implicit contractual obligations) and due to the requirement for "meeting of the minds" there can be cases where a contract doesn't have the power that it may claim it has. Of course, a legal document is a much more formalised agreement (and obviously they are a very useful tool to make sure that the precise agreement is laid out) but just because it's more formal doesn't implicitly mean that the document itself is somehow imbued with some mystical force to effect consequences. I'm not a lawyer, but I have discussed this topic with lawyers in the past.