4 ms·

> It is designed so that if one chooses to create a work > that makes use of another GPLed work, that the license > "spreads" to the resulting combined work

> It is designed so that if one chooses to create a work > that makes use of another GPLed work, that the license > "spreads" to the resulting combined work. This is true for all popular software licenses under current US copyright law.

bigiain 14y ago
And this is a freedom, not a restriction. If you _dont_ license your code under the GPL or some similar license which explicitly allows others to build on your code, copyright prohibits anyone from doing so. You can't, in general, "create a work that makes use of" somebody else's song, or movie, or novel. Because copyright says you need their permission, and there's not a culture of songwriters, filmmakers, or authors; who explicitly grant the freedom to use their work without asking. I find it difficult to understand people who intentionally use negative language like "viral" about the GPL. It's remarkable there so much high quality software available where the authors have said "here, you can use it inspite of the fact that it's copyrighted to us, the only condition we require is that you offer that freedom to everybody else if you build something new using our copyrighted work."
- Xylakant 14y ago
  By that argument, MIT is even more free. Licensing your code under MIT basically says "here, you can use it inspite of the fact that it's copyrighted to us, no strings attached. Go forth and multiply." This is why the GPL gets portrayed as viral. It spreads to the parts that I add and restricts the license for my additions. Don't get me wrong: It's a completely fair thing to do - the authors are giving me something for free, but it's still a restriction.
Xylakant 14y ago
How is the above statement true for BSD (3-Clause), MIT, APL or WTFPL? Neither of those licenses places any restriction on the license of the combined work.
- jmillikin 14y ago
  Nobody has the right to change the license of a work except the copyright holder. If I have a project licensed under the X11 license, and I copy some BSD-licensed code into it, then that code is still the property of the original owner, and it needs to remain under the BSD license. If I simply copied it and stripped out the copyright notices, then I would be committing copyright infringement.
  - Xylakant 14y ago
    True. The code you copied is still under MIT/X11/WTFPL etc. However, with GPL, the combined work, so the code that you copied and the code that you added yourself must be GPL. This is not true for MIT/BSD/X11/WTFPL. Under those licences, the combined work can be licensed under any license you choose, even a closed source one - so your original assertion is wrong.

bigiain 14y ago

And this is a freedom, not a restriction. If you _dont_ license your code under the GPL or some similar license which explicitly allows others to build on your code, copyright prohibits anyone from doing so. You can't, in general, "create a work that makes use of" somebody else's song, or movie, or novel. Because copyright says you need their permission, and there's not a culture of songwriters, filmmakers, or authors; who explicitly grant the freedom to use their work without asking. I find it difficult to understand people who intentionally use negative language like "viral" about the GPL. It's remarkable there so much high quality software available where the authors have said "here, you can use it inspite of the fact that it's copyrighted to us, the only condition we require is that you offer that freedom to everybody else if you build something new using our copyrighted work."

Xylakant 14y ago
By that argument, MIT is even more free. Licensing your code under MIT basically says "here, you can use it inspite of the fact that it's copyrighted to us, no strings attached. Go forth and multiply." This is why the GPL gets portrayed as viral. It spreads to the parts that I add and restricts the license for my additions. Don't get me wrong: It's a completely fair thing to do - the authors are giving me something for free, but it's still a restriction.

Xylakant 14y ago

How is the above statement true for BSD (3-Clause), MIT, APL or WTFPL? Neither of those licenses places any restriction on the license of the combined work.

jmillikin 14y ago
Nobody has the right to change the license of a work except the copyright holder. If I have a project licensed under the X11 license, and I copy some BSD-licensed code into it, then that code is still the property of the original owner, and it needs to remain under the BSD license. If I simply copied it and stripped out the copyright notices, then I would be committing copyright infringement.
- Xylakant 14y ago
  True. The code you copied is still under MIT/X11/WTFPL etc. However, with GPL, the combined work, so the code that you copied and the code that you added yourself must be GPL. This is not true for MIT/BSD/X11/WTFPL. Under those licences, the combined work can be licensed under any license you choose, even a closed source one - so your original assertion is wrong.