jdow wrote: > Andy, I am a software developer by trade. I use it to earn my daily bread > and board. If I develop in an environment that involves GPL I cannot see a > model that will continue to feed me and house me unless I take up a side > job asking, "Do you want to supersize that, sir?" or sit at my own help > desk all day instead of developing. GPL contaminates things too thoroughly. > I am not a lawyer. I just read that document and basically stay away from > GPL except for some recreational coding I've done. I also design software and hardware... but depending on the field you work in, GPL stuff can bring an awful lot of firepower to the party very cheaply. Again depending on the circumstance, the compataibility, quality, time to market and royalty-free advanatages surrounding that can overwhelm the possible competitive disadvantage of having to open some of your stuff. The general deal is AIUI if you link with GPL'd stuff -- not LGPL'd, which will not infect what it links to but only changes to itself -- you will have to open your work. It seems that we crossed a threshold now and the signs are that if you generate kernel modules you can expect that sources will be demanded. However, there's a lot of room in there for usermode apps that just link to LGPL's libraries (like, eg, Oracle) that you for sure won't have to open source unless you want to. Of course in your particular field if there is no specific benefit to be had from using or being directly compatible with GPL'd stuff then it makes sense to avoid it. But if its just that you are considering to use, say, Fedora as a platform for scripts or usermode apps then AFAIUI there is zero leakage of the GPL-ness of the OS apps up into your code and BSD or GPL makes no odds there. -Andy
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