Re: how much is too much?

[Chad Whitacre]

> The bottom line seems to be that the street between copyleft and 
> non-copyleft free software only runs one way: copyleft can incorporate 
> non-copyleft and retain its identity, but not the other way around. 
> I.e., the GPL's hegemony extends to non-copyleft free software as much 
> as to proprietary software. Accurate?

Actually I suppose we would say that there is no street between copyleft 
and proprietary, so the relationship is not entirely parallel. Ok, how 
about a little ascii art. :-)

  copyleft <---- non-copyleft ----> proprietary
    |  ^             |  ^
    |  |             |  |
    `--'             `--'

  - copyleft can incorporate copyleft and non-copyleft software
  - non-copyleft can incorporate non-copyleft software
  - proprietary can incorporate non-copyleft software


So copyleft gets two-thirds of the pie, while the others only get 
one-third, so to speak. And of course, this refers to incorporation of 
code rather than external usage via pipes, etc.



chad