Re: GPL is like a cancer

[David Kastrup]

Rjack <user@example.net> writes:

> "As we were going over the scan results I noticed a very interesting
> trend. The GPL licensed software tends to assimilate quite a bit of
> BSD-style and public domain source code. By including that other
> source code it ends up spreading like a cancer."
> http://questonsecurity.blogspot.com/2009/04/gpl-license-is-like-cancer.html

Hm?  The whole point of BSD-style and public domain source code (and
what the proponents are proud about) is that it is _intended_ for
assimilation into differently licensed software.  For example, everybody
and his brother seems to maintain his own TCP/IP stack derived from some
original BSD code.

If people don't _want_ to have code of theirs integrated into
differently licensed code, they should use a copyleft style license or
something even more restrictive.

If people get _annoyed_ about more restrictive licensing, they need to
add measures against it.  And that lands them with copyleft.

It's amusing that BSD-style software proponents get annoyed when anybody
makes actual use of the liberties of the BSD license.

-- 
David Kastrup