On 12/13/12 3:14 AM, Colin Adams wrote:
Presumably you are talking about companies who want to distribute programs (a very small minority of companies, I would think)?
Not at all. In addition to Michael's own rebuttal, I'll add my own. There are many companies which *fear* the L/GPL. The important thing to note here is this: The Actual Legal Requirements of Copyleft Licenses are IRRELEVANT. This simple fact is consistently ignored by advocates of the GPL (of which I number myself, FWIW). The great majority of all software produced in the world is developed for in-house use, and thus would not be subject to any of the "bad" side effects from using copyleft software. And yet, in spite of this fact, there are a great many companies which have official policies forbidding the use of copyleft software. Why is that? It's because companies have legal departments whose jobs it is to ensure that the company won't be destroyed by legal action. And because there isn't an extensive record of actual court rulings regarding purported violations of the GPL, lawyers are rightly wary of it. Companies do not (generally) avoid the GPL because of understanding its requirements and refusing to abide by them. Companies avoid the GPL because they do not know what it means! More particularly, because they do not know what the courts will think it means, and that's too much uncertainty to risk your company over. Any actual commercial burden imposed by the GPL re distributing software is beside the point. Corporate lawyers (for these companies) won't risk getting close enough to even evaluate what that burden would amount to. -- Live well, ~wren