[jrm4]

I'd say "learn your history?" This all came about because of Richard Stallman et al, who absolutely were not "here's some code, do what you want with it."

They were "We have a good thing with this Unix deal and how we do it, we share freely, backwards AND FORWARD. How might we continue this in a wider fashion; knowing that some might be inclined to take and not give back?"

And thus, the GPL was born. MIT-style licenses are fine in some cases, but you're working of the back of Linux, and that's GPL territory.

[md8z]

I know who Richard Stallman is, I've met him several times and I used to volunteer for the FSF. The GPL says that the user is allowed to share modified versions with other users. It does not say that the original author is required to accept some modifications into their version. If you don't believe me then the GPL FAQ has a bit more information about this: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.htm...

"Some have proposed alternatives to the GPL that require modified versions to go through the original author. As long as the original author keeps up with the need for maintenance, this may work well in practice, but if the author stops (more or less) to do something else or does not attend to all the users' needs, this scheme falls down. Aside from the practical problems, this scheme does not allow users to help each other."

It's pretty explicitly spelled out here that it is absolutely what they meant, it wouldn't work at all if it wasn't "here's some code, do what you want with it."

If someone is trying to get you to take a case along the lines, I would have to say don't take it, it's probably not going to be a winner.