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“GPL is toxic for embedded commercial software” Why is that?
by cpach 7mo ago
“GPL is toxic for embedded commercial software”
Why is that?
- dietr1ch 7mo agoHe probably meant viral or tried to make a deadly twist on virality
- bobmcnamara 7mo agoMany bare metal or RTOS systems consist of a handful of statically linked programs (one or two bootloaders and the main application), many companies would rather find a non-GPL library rather than open up the rest of the system's code. Sometimes a system contains proprietary code that may not be open sourced as well.
- 1718627440 7mo agoIn the embedded world you don't really sell software you sell devices with firmware. Unless the library OS is AGPL, it doesn't matter too much.
- tjoff 7mo agoYes it matters a lot?
- bobmcnamara 7mo agoIt matters because: 1) you may not have the right to open the rest of the code on the system 2) although you make money when you sell devices, it also makes cloning trivial