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by startingup 6114 days ago
Personally I generally advise our developers to avoid using GPL-ed software, even as part of web services, as much as possible - only exception being Linux, which we use as a OS, but we are moving to BSD steadily.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) there are excellent non-GPL open source alternatives today. And my subjective impression is that recent open source projects that use GPL are less popular than BSD/MIT/Apache based alternatives. That may be confirmation bias, of course.

So in that sense, I agree that GPL is declining ... frankly, I am happy with that development, because I don't consider GPL to be a license so much as a political philosophy, a philosophy I strongly disagree with. Which is why we choose not to use GPL software to the maximum extent possible (much as Stallman would choose not to use the software we create, which is perfectly fine with me!).
2 comments
ZeroGravitas 6114 days ago
As long as your software is "Free Software" then Stallman would use it. It doesn't need to be GPL, or even necessarily "compatible" with the GPL to be "Free Software" (a common misconception).

You (like many others in these parts) seem to be avoiding the GPL, to the detriment of your business, and for no practical or pragmatic purpose. Personally I have no time for such zealotry.

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FooBarWidget 6114 days ago
Why avoid using? You can only get into license trouble if you copy and paste code from a GPL'ed project. Using GPL'ed software shouldn't affect you in any way whatsoever.
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