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Why the GPL Licensing Cops Are the Good Guys
Reader rtfa-troll writes: "'GPL enforcement by Software Freedom Conservancy puts electronics makers on notice, leaves business users untouched,' says Infoworld, going on to explain 'You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be raided by your proprietary suppliers, in the form of the Business Software Alliance, than to ever hear from SFC, let alone face any action. License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the case concerns an end-user license agreement (EULA), not a source license.' The article gives a good summary of why having GPL licenses enforced helps everybody, except for 'hardware manufacturers — typically those creating low-cost consumer and business electronics' who need to verify that they pass on the same rights to others as they received with the original code."
Another job well-done, by the alleged editors. That link goes to the second page of a two-page article.
First page.
So you need to use software licenses for any FOSS you use that allow you to use their compilers, tools, operating systems and whatever other tools you need in addition to the unique elements you develop on your own to produce a saleable package that customers will be willing to buy, without giving up any right to control copyright of your own work. I think we're all fine with conveying the license to the FOSS software that's included in our packages to the end user without restriction. You want to use the Linux distribution that's included in my package for stuff I didn't envision? Go ahead. I never owned that anyway and I don't care what you do with it as long as you don't drag me into liability issues for your modifications. I just don't want you to copy the elements I made without paying me for each installation.
Fud fud fud!
It's perfectly legal to build proprietary apps on top of Linux, glibc, and other friends. What you have to do is to provide the source to any modifications you make to the FOSS tools or packages, and convey the license to the user.
The elements you made which are not under GPL/similar, you can do whatever you want with them. The author of the GPLed package on the other hand, intended that you give back, as payment for his having built something you can use for free, any modifications you make. Are you saying that I should respect your right to your own license, but you won't respect mine?
Because whoever made the installer did it wrong. When presented with the GPL in an installer, the button should read "Next" or "Continue".
You do not need to accept the GPL just to use GPLed software.