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Ask HN: Concrete examples of honest people with anything to fear from the GPL
GPL-related debates seem to be rather short on actual examples of anyone who has anything to fear from the license, who wasn't already doing something obviously questionable (see this for an example: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=610764) Would anyone care to provide some?
Edit: "My customers/managers/colleagues fear the GPL" is not a valid criticism. Anything with a similar amount of well-funded FUD thrown at it will be similarly feared.
- bjplink 17y agoI'm not sure if this is "obviously questionable" or not but every person who sells a WordPress theme or plugin apparently doesn't have a leg to stand on if anyone challenges them by releasing their works for free.
- gojomo 17y agoAt one level, your question contains the seeds of its own answer. Strong GPL partisans tend to assume anyone doing things where the GPL language/intent is fuzzy is "doing something obviously questionable". So one fear is, you could wind up on the right side of the license and the law, but still face resentful, accusatory opinions from parts of the community. And thus a related fear: your project could be distracted by long discussions like these.
- profquail 17y agoAssuming that the GPL holds in court (in whatever country/state you're in), my biggest fear is that I wouldn't understand some part of it and get into legal trouble. With a BSD or MIT license (or even just public domain) on the code you're using, you know that it's free to use any way you want. Maybe a bit paranoid, but with a large software project, you (or your boss) might not want to take that chance, and you'd be stuck buying a commercial app/library instead.
- gojomo 17y agoIs there a reason you used 'news.ycombinator.ORG' in the above link?