I have no moderation points, so i'll bite the troll.
How can a voluntarily adopted license "force" anybody? As you say, you just have to reject the use of GPLed software if you don't like it. And remember that the GPL must only be accepted if you redistribute another's program, not just if you use it. A programmer should be aware of the terms in which the code she relies upon is licensed, right?
The whole point of the GPL is to build a community of people freely sharing code and donating it to each other. The license is tuned and tweaked to do just that, and do it really well.
Not really, it allows you to freely modify the source, the freedom to redistribute is somewhat limited (at least much more than BSD).
The two following rules irritate me personally.
1. You must make all derivative code GPL. What if I take some code from a GPL program and use it in my own. My program automatically becomes GPL. Yet if I take code from a BSD code I can choose to keep it BSD or make it GPL (or something else). Why can't you make GPL code another copyleft license? Personally I think many people don't like using GPL but because of this they don't have much choice. It is a one-way street and this is what the "troll" meant by it being viral.
2. Under section 3 you must provide source code with all object/executable form. Even if you dont modify the source. Am i the only one who finds this ridiculous and somewhat a pain, you can't even point them to the location where you got the source. I mean yes you could go with option b) but who is going to take that offer anyways, just more uneccessary hastle.
I've used it quite a bit, seems to be a bug in colour conversion though (at least in version 5.5.4).
I found that it has problems converting an image to 256 color. It seems to mess up conversion of pixels with alpha transparency. The fix I found was to convert to gif format, then back to png (which automatically converts to 256 colour).
Slashdot Mirror
The two following rules irritate me personally.
1. You must make all derivative code GPL. What if I take some code from a GPL program and use it in my own. My program automatically becomes GPL. Yet if I take code from a BSD code I can choose to keep it BSD or make it GPL (or something else). Why can't you make GPL code another copyleft license? Personally I think many people don't like using GPL but because of this they don't have much choice. It is a one-way street and this is what the "troll" meant by it being viral.
2. Under section 3 you must provide source code with all object/executable form. Even if you dont modify the source. Am i the only one who finds this ridiculous and somewhat a pain, you can't even point them to the location where you got the source. I mean yes you could go with option b) but who is going to take that offer anyways, just more uneccessary hastle.
I've used it quite a bit, seems to be a bug in colour conversion though (at least in version 5.5.4).
I found that it has problems converting an image to 256 color. It seems to mess up conversion of pixels with alpha transparency. The fix I found was to convert to gif format, then back to png (which automatically converts to 256 colour).
This may be fixed in later versions though.