[saagarjha]

I think you should get new lawyers if this is their understanding of how software licenses work.

[mgsloan2]

See for example https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

> Code licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) MUST NOT be used at Google.

[jenadine]

It’s their loss

[Defletter]

Is it? Because open source tools re-licensing themselves to be more permissive would seem to indicate whose loss it really is.

[michaelmrose]

This might indicate moreso that they believe they won't lose anything by the transition and users might ultimately benefit

[mistercheph]

Embrace, extend, extinguish. it could take about a century, but every software company (hardware maybe next century) is in the process of being swallowed by free software. Thats not to say people can’t carve out a niche and have balling corporate retreats for a while.. until the sleeping giant wakes up and rolls over you.

[zelcon]

Free software basically only exists because it’s subsidized by nonfree software. It also has no original ideas. Every piece of good free software is just a copy of something proprietary or some internal tool.

[Defletter]

Do you have any kind of source for such claims?

[Defletter]

You've just made a pretty outrageous claim without evidence that would require a lot of effort on my part to refute, so I'll just go with: if you say so.

[rerdavies]

I'm wondering if you've ever actually asked a real corporate lawyer for an opinion on anything relating to GPL licenses. The results are pretty consistent. I've made the trip on three occasions, and the response each time was: "this was not drafted by a lawyer, it's virtually ininterpretable, and it is wildly unpredictable what the consequences of using this software are."

[saagarjha]

Why do some companies engage with it then?

[amszmidt]

Eh, all the GNU family of licenses were drafted by lawyers.

Just using any Copyleft software has no legal consequences (copyleft licenses kick in when distributing, not using them).