4 ms·

I get where you're going with that line of argument. But lets take the counterpoint. How many times has Legal been introduced to go over Microsoft Windows cont

I get where you're going with that line of argument. But lets take the counterpoint. How many times has Legal been introduced to go over Microsoft Windows contract/EULA? How about each other piece of software in your installation? Are you guaranteed any sort of amnesty or accident forgiveness with the BSA if they catch "incorrectly licensed software" on your network? Is the company guaranteed any sort of "fitness" if the software creators decide to remotely turn off their software? The GPL is cleanly written. And even to a non-legal person like me, seems pretty straight forward. The Apple/Microsoft/Google/Amazon/Oracle contracts and EULAs are most certainly not.

geofft 9y ago
Microsoft has an incentive to sell licenses, though. If you're violating their license, they're much happier if you pay them for sufficient licenses than if you stop using Microsoft. So a business will understand this, and say that while in theory Microsoft could demand something unreasonable, in practice you'll be able to negotiate something (possibly even paying less than sticker cost) for the right to keep using the software you were using, so there's no realistic risk that you'll lose your ability to use MS software at all. The average GPL software has nobody who's even in a position to be negotiated with, because it has multiple authors who aren't communicating with each other. If I violate the Linux kernel's license, who do I offer to pay to get the license reinstated? How do I make sure some individual contributor I haven't paid who disagrees with me ideologically (say I'm Northrop Grumman, or Planned Parenthood, or something) won't sue me and refuse to settle for anything short of shutting down all my infrastructure and starting from scratch?