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Comment by Jonnax | Hacker News Reader

Well to be fair to the author the writer of the article has the job title:

Sr. Director Open Source Consulting Services

And they're posting on the Linux Foundation's site so that's a bit more than just some random person writing an article for the site.

Also the term "viral" comes off as an insult to the licence, I think the term GNU Public Virus used to be a common descriptor.

I think that's why the term Copyleft was introduced.

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I don't see 'viral' as an insult, I see it as a feature. I'm certainly pro-GPL, but I don't use it in too many of my projects. When I do use it, it's because I want that viral nature. When I don't, it's because I want people to have the freedom to modify it on their terms. However, pretending that every project should be licensed under copyleft licenses or that there's no room for criticism of the GPL smacks of zealotry.

As for the author, I don't have the full article, but he isn't listed on the 'Board Member', 'Leadership', or 'Technical Advisory Board' sections on the Linux Foundation webpage. Everyone there seems to have pretty damn fancy titles. I have no idea of his actual position in the hierarchy.

It has a history of being used pejoratively. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_license

Many terms do. Socialists and communists still call themselves those terms despite McCarthyism and the red scare, the term queer is still used despite the fact that it was used as an insult for a very long time, the n-word's reappropriation despite its horrible history, and too many other examples for me to list.

Perhaps it's time for the FSF and its ilk to wear 'viral' as a badge of honor, instead of playing the semantics game.

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