[byuu]

> The thing that people fail to realize is that nobody is forcing said developer to use the GPL code instead of writing it themselves.

When used on an end-user application, GPL does a fantastic job. But in library use, it's a very viral license.

Say you wanted to write a KDE-native application back when Qt was GPL or commercial only. You couldn't do it by using GTK+ ... it wouldn't look quite right. You would have to pay money, or make your application GPL as well. And what if you couldn't pay?

It's not hard to imagine a world where the GPL truly took off, and everything from the top-level GUI toolkit all the way down to libc functions were all GPL'ed. You'd be forced to start from absolutely nothing to make even simple applications. Years and years of work just to get a basic desktop application going. And it would be entirely alien to the rest of the OS. That's not really an "option" anymore. Nobody would implement that much just to port to one OS.

No, we're not there. And no, we're never going to get there. Most library writers wisely choose the LGPL, and many others release everything under the BSD license. But if you take the GPL to its extreme conclusions, you can see why people consider it viral.

[belorn]

If GPL is viral then proprietary licenses are deadly radioactive material.

Say you wanted to write a streaming application and have popular films on it. You would have to pay money, and make your application follow the restrictive demands of the movie publishers. And what if you couldn't pay?

You'd be forced to start from absolutely nothing, with no proprietary movies at all. Millions and millions of licenses cost just to get a basic streaming application going, and it would entirely alien to an community where everyone share and share alike. That's not really an "option" for most developers of streaming services.

Proprietary movies is already in its extreme conclusion, and you can see why so many people consider proprietary licenses as deadly radioactive material that puts people in jail.

[byuu]

You're right, proprietary licenses are even worse for sharing. My only point was that the LGPL and BSDL are much more permissive (less viral) than the GPL for sharing library code.

[mystikal]

Your gracious replies here are awesome!

[andrepd]

That's bullshit. So you're entitled to the work of others, but others aren't entitled to your work? You must choose: use GPL and make your code GPL too, or release closed proprietary software and start from scratch. You want to piggyback off others' work but you don't want anybody piggybacking off your work. Well, you can't have the cake and eat it too.

[byuu]

> You want to piggyback off others' work but you don't want anybody piggybacking off your work.

Anyone who has ever written a program for DOS, Windows, OS X, Linux or BSD has piggybacked off others' work. Anyone who has ever used a compiler to build their applications has. By that logic, proprietary programs should not exist at all; except maybe the OS kernels.

And you're welcome to think that way. I don't care for proprietary applications much myself. But I think you're pretty far removed from the mainstream at this point to advocate for the destruction of sales for the entire commercial software industry.

> You must choose: use GPL and make your code GPL too, or release closed proprietary software and start from scratch.

And that's exactly what people do. It's made substantially easier because most of the critical libraries (C runtime, GUI toolkit, etc) aren't under the GPL.

[fungos]

I somewhat agree with your conclusions, but not with your reasoning.

Anyway, to me GPL and LGPL always was the same thing but in different contexts: GPL = Applications; LGPL = Libraries - a nice trick is instead reading Lesser GPL, read it Library GPL. It fells better.