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Comment by nikcub | Hacker News Reader

Google won't touch or integrate anything that is GPL licensed into their own products - especially AGPL. the linux kernel in android is the only GPL code you will find from Google, and even then they got a lot of criticism from FSF folks for deciding to license modules under a more liberal license

So if you are a developer and want to see your own library and code used by corporates such as Google and many others, a more liberal license is the only way to go.

If it is a javascript library or a web application, again, a more liberal license is the way to go since the FSF insist that a script include means your entire app must be GPL.

Using copyright law to force corporations and developers to become contributors and active participants in your software project is, to me, a ridiculous notion.

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> Google won't touch or integrate anything that is GPL licensed into their own products

ffmpeg is GPL, and it is being used in youtube. Isn't that the story here?

> Using copyright law to force corporations and developers to become contributors and active participants in your software project is, to me, a ridiculous notion.

So the fact that so many companies contribute to the Linux kernel has nothing to do with its GPL license?

Without the GPL there would be a "tragedy of the commons" situation: it would be best for the common good to share and avoid duplicated efforts, but it would be advantageous for individual companies to use the code but not share their improvements. The GPL fixes that by enforcing cooperation.

FFmpeg can also be compiled with an LGPL license so it can be linked in commercial products.

Also executing an external GPL library/binary from a commercial product (no direct linking) is not in direct contradiction with GPL terms (although it's a gray area where most companies would probably not want to go).

Can you elaborate on the gray area bit?

See the GPL FAQ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

The last paragraph describe the gray area; i.e. if a proprietary program depends on- and combine a GPL program to perform its functionality it can be argued that the two parts are a combined work and hence the whole work must be licensed under the GPL.

> Using copyright law to force corporations and developers to become contributors and active participants in your software project is, to me, a ridiculous notion.

I don't really understand this sentence. No one is forcing anyone to do anything. There is code, and it has a license, and if you don't like the terms of the license, you don't use the code. Is it also ridiculous that that most software/movie/music/book creators use copyright law to "force" consumers to pay for their output?

It seems like a personal choice to me. If you want companies to use your code internally, and are okay with the fact that they might make improvements that they don't release back (or think that voluntary releases will be sufficient), then GPL or BSD/MIT is fine. If you don't want to allow for proprietary forks of stuff used in webapp backends, then AGPL is a better choice. If you have a different set of preferences about how people use your code than either of those, you can keep it proprietary and just negotiate custom licenses with potential users.

AGPL seems like a particularly reasonable choice if you're running a SaaS and want to release your code, but also want to make sure no competitor can use your code as a starting point from which to leapfrog you without releasing the improvements back for your own use. That's the approach gitorious takes, for example. Of course, the other way to keep competitors from leapfrogging you with your own code is not to release it at all, or release it with a proprietary license--- the approach github and Dropbox and many other SaaS take. From that perspective, AGPL is at least more liberal a license than the "no code release" license.

This is absurd. We use Mercurial and Dulwich code in the project hosting site, and those are both GPL. We're very careful about where we allow GPL'd code, but we do use it quite a bit. Obviously, we're more paranoid about AGPL, but that's really a different license because of the extra restrictions.

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