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No, the majority of companies shipping a product like coreutils don't care if it's GPL. They are extremely unlikely to modify it and meeting the licensing requi
by russdill 3y ago
No, the majority of companies shipping a product like coreutils don't care if it's GPL. They are extremely unlikely to modify it and meeting the licensing requirements with a source offer is not burdensome. The binaries aren't linked against so there isn't some viral nature.
The issue is with GPLv3.
- bayindirh 3y agoGPLv3's biggest features are preventing source code from bricking by not running on the target hardware unless it's signed with a confidential private key, and automatically granting any patents which may encumber the source code. So, companies doesn't like to share their source code in a usable form if they're not against GPLv2 but are against GPLv3. Companies are being companies. It's not about the license, but allowing others to use their code on their products. So they're after smoke and mirrors, and when their mirrors are taken away, they have moved to mirrors that work. Am I understanding that right?
- russdill 3y agoPrevious open source licenses focused on making sure that improvements to open source software were shared. There were created at a time when appliance and IoT like devices did not exist. Many companies have been very supportive of the model, joined open source groups, and even taken an upstream first approach to open source projects. Open source projects provide an enormous asset to companies, and it's often in their best interest to see those projects thrive. But yes, companies are much less interested in people modifying software on devices they sell. It isn't smoke and mirrors, there are just different reasons that different individuals support open source software. And there's different licenses to suit different purposes.