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Yes, the grandparent is crazy to think the GPL isn't relevant. In certain circles it isn't as popular, the GP must travel in those circles. It's still wonderfu

Yes, the grandparent is crazy to think the GPL isn't relevant. In certain circles it isn't as popular, the GP must travel in those circles. It's still wonderful to be on a linux system where I can just "apt-get source <pckage>" and look at how it works, try to work around bugs, etc. The attitude that you should be able to break apart anything you're running and hack on it is the fundamental principal of the GPL. I have a suspicion that people who dismiss the GPL nowadays are young enough to have never lived through the times where the standard unix server was running SunOS and good luck to you if you ever found a bug in the system. You know, the days where you had to pay for a (sucky) compiler.

rdtsc 12y ago
I think a lot of people are shortsighted and they sort of see the world immediately in front of their eyes. I am building a product, I need a library, GPL, fuck GPL! Gah, gotta search for a BSD one and curse GPL in the process. They probably never lived in the days before Linux, GCC and free software as something that can happen in reality. Yet looking back here we are. People sharing code on github, companies sharing their code (either licensed as GPL or other open source licenses). High grade languages, compilers, OSes, kernels, crypto libraries all free and/or open. I think that would not have happened had it not beed for Stallman and GPL. A lot of developers I find are also bored or ignorant to study or understand licensing. Concepts like "copyright", "license", "open", "free" are all confused and relegated to mumbo-jumbo legalese. Today most have internalized the simple heuristic "GPL" = stay the fuck back or our legal department will slap me on the head, "BSD" = good, use anyway you like.