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Legal Group Releases Guide To GPL Compliance
An anonymous reader brings news that the Software Freedom Law Center has published a guide for compliance with the GNU General Public License. The purpose of the guide is to prevent "common mistakes" the SFLC has encountered during its various GPL violation investigations. Their suggestions include close scrutiny of software acquisitions, more precise tracking of changes and updates, and avoiding "build gurus." They also provide tips for dealing with a violation. The full guide is available at the SFLC's website.
So... Is violating intellectual property laws a bad thing? Or is it only bad, if the property is that of an open-source programmer, but Ok, if it was created by a musician or an actor?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Exactly. The result is that I have been advising my employer to remove dependencies on GPL and LGPL software from all of our products. Either take a commercial license, find an alternative that has a more permissive licence or roll your own.
You want to know what is so bad about the GPL? Anything that takes 15 pages to explain how to be compliant and contains recommendations that you change your software development process as part of it is a significant problem. And did you notice those terms that copyright owners might impose? They could cripple a small company (and most software development companies are small).
And that is just GPLv2. GPLv3 and the patent bar makes it even worse. Companies often have to defend themselves from patent infringement suits by using countersuits, or at least threatening countersuits, and the GPLv3 is booby-trapped to prevent that. You could potentially destroy a company through this.
And what do you do with a GPL library? You have to release all of the code you link to it? That is a very poor trade off. The FSF is encouraging authors to release libraries under GPL. That makes them worthless for many commercial applications. Even LGPL is not so good because static linking makes it viral.
As to those who question my use of the term 'commercial'? Sorry that you don't like it but it is the common vernacular. Please suggest a different term rather than name calling and insults.
Sorry you don't like my telling it the way it is. I didn't expect to get a cheering reception but the facts are the facts.
GPL is DANGEROUS if you are selling software. I am sure if you ask Richard Stallman he will tell you it was done that way intentionally. His agenda to change the way the software industry is well known.