8 ms·

Why would they need to avoid GPL? They’re not selling to the general public.

• Rebelgecko 6y ago
  My possibly flawed understanding is that copyleft requirements can be an issue even if your code isn't available to the general public (for example if it's delivered to a foreign government partner or shared with a contractor) On top of that, NASA does release some open source code. In general, government code is supposed to be released when the least restrictive license possible which usually means something like Apache or even straight-up public domain. If you're bound by the GPL you're no longer able to do that.
  • alisonkisk 6y ago
    What do you think "possible" means? Do you think the government uses no proprietary software?
    • Rebelgecko 6y ago
      I think maybe we're misunderstanding each other because your question seems like it's asking about a different topic. There's a big difference between software the government creates using a library and software the government buys using a library. Oftentimes when the governments acquires non-OSS COTS they don't even get access to the source code.