I think the staying power of GNU and the GPL and associated projects is due in large part to the so-called "viral" nature of the license – code that is GPL'ed m

I think the staying power of GNU and the GPL and associated projects is due in large part to the so-called "viral" nature of the license – code that is GPL'ed must remain GPL'ed, and thus is still available with all the original rights due to the end-user as it had, and never less. I don't think we would be where we are at right now had it not been for this, and for the ardent, strong stand free software advocates that pushed to keep it that way. Is the GPL a panacea? No, and I don't think anyone believes that (even RMS agreed that Vorbis should be BSD licensed when it was released). But the fact that it rubbed some people the wrong way (and still does) was worth it for the long-term beneficial outcome we got because of it.