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Thank you, that's probably the best explanation I've seen of the distinction. Still, it's an uphill battle to fight with bosses that don't understand the licen

• belorn 8y ago
  It depend on the industry and how competitive it is. It is relative known that the game industry is rather saturated and delaying a launch for a few months can be extremely costly, so its a rather costly mistake to re-implement a parsing library when there is a free alternative that is compatible with the business model. If its not compatible, it is still cheaper on the average to have a lawyer/developer send a email asking the project authors for an exception. For PC games its not uncommon to see third-party license text that is larger than the credits, occasionally put after the credits or in a file in the install directory. Not all industries are like that, and places like Google and Apple can afford to put years of developer time on re-implementing stuff for which they don't even know the outcome of. If you are dominant enough then delaying a product by months or years is not a big deal, and as seems common, companies like that has a reputation for throwing money and employees at the problem. I would guess that it is easier, quicker and "cheaper" for a Google project leader to get more people on a team rather than get a custom software license through the approval process.