Except the "whole program" bit is in question here. A lot of legal scholars doubt that using the GPL in the way the FSF wants it to be used when it comes to lin

Except the "whole program" bit is in question here. A lot of legal scholars doubt that using the GPL in the way the FSF wants it to be used when it comes to linking would actually confer the terms of that license to the final product (because the FSF wants it to be considered a derivative work of the GPL code). In the EU, it's to the point where the EU themselves have written guidance that they doubt this interpretation applies[0]. This would effectively limit the scope of the GPL to always function like the LGPL/MPL (or any other copyright license that limits the copyleft element to the parts of the program actually licensed as such, as opposed to spreading it across the whole work.) The problem is that the GPL isn't the law; it's something (a license or a contract, the interpretation of which is a toss-up; the FSF wants it to be a license since it allows shrinkwrapping the terms, all legal enforcement has it treated as a contract) that relies on existing law to function. Which fails to work if it tries to do something that legal framework doesn't allow you to do. You can't enforce copyright over derivatives if it's not considered a derivative to begin with. If the FSF conceded that the GPL was actually a contract and were to write more explicit terms stating that this is a requirement to using GPL'ed source code, they'd probably not run into this problem, but because they insist on forcing it through the framework of copyright the virality of the license only goes as far as the definition of derivative works go. [0]: https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/licence-compatibility-permissivity-reciprocity-and-interoperability https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/licence-compatib...