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by mindcrime 4962 days ago
I'ts not just "not strictly true," it's not true at all. Nothing in the GPL prohibits GPL'd code from being used in commercial products. What is prohibited is using it in proprietary, closed-source products. You can have a product which is both F/OSS and commercial. Ask Red Hat, for example.
2 comments
twelve45 4962 days ago
You are right, of course. "commercial" was the wrong terminology; I meant proprietary, closed-source products as you said.

However, whatever your views on closed source products, they are still quite prevalent. IMO LGPL is a great license to get support from companies that sell these products, while ensuring that your software fundamentally remains free.

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byroot 4962 days ago
It's sad to see how the FUD around the GPL is widespread.

It remind me a few months ago the launch of meteor.js. I heard so much people saying that it was "not usable commercially"...

And the worse is that the same people have MongoDB in production with it's AGPL license.

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justincormack 4962 days ago
With JavaScript and the GPL it is very unclear what "linking" is. Probably your entire website becomes GPL including content. Who knows as the language was written for system libraries. So I can see lawyers having an issue.

If you are not intending to modify Mongo then AGPL is not restrictive, which may be OK. The database API is not usually considered as "linking" as it is a wire protocol.

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