The GPL variants are not widely understood. They are closer to widely misunderstood. But due to their popularity and importance, specialized experts who do understand them, well and in detail, are available for hire. Heather Meeker, for example.
I like the GPLs and what they stand for. In another post, also popular here on HN, I wrote:
> The last [great idea in open-source licensing], not found in The MIT License, builds off license conditions: “Copyleft” licenses like the GNU General Public License use license conditions to control how those making changes can license and distribute their changed versions.
In another post, again channeling my own thoughts and feelings, rather than those of a broader, abstracted business community, I wrote:
> As an attorney, for one, and a coder who came up on FSF software, for two, it kills me to see students and pre-exit programmers write off good licensing hygiene as unnecessary. It makes me queasy to read, via the closed, hood-welded-shut social network du jour, that "open source has won". How smoothly both disdain for "corporate interests" assailing community values, on the one hand, and utter disdain for the GPL, its politics and its moralism, on the other, roll off the tongue. It’s a cruel, cruel world.
Copyleft licenses are more complex than permissive licenses by design. GPL-family licenses add idiosyncratic style and politics to that mix. There is a whole body of signals and accepted practices filling in interpretive fissures in that complexity---for FSF projects, for Linux, for MongoDB (AGPL). Consider the recent "enforcement principles" release and the disagreements that led to it. Corporate copyleft users have to do that homework. Corporate permissive users get the night off.
I like the GPLs and what they stand for. In another post, also popular here on HN, I wrote:
> The last [great idea in open-source licensing], not found in The MIT License, builds off license conditions: “Copyleft” licenses like the GNU General Public License use license conditions to control how those making changes can license and distribute their changed versions.
https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/09/21/MIT-License-Line-b...
In another post, again channeling my own thoughts and feelings, rather than those of a broader, abstracted business community, I wrote:
> As an attorney, for one, and a coder who came up on FSF software, for two, it kills me to see students and pre-exit programmers write off good licensing hygiene as unnecessary. It makes me queasy to read, via the closed, hood-welded-shut social network du jour, that "open source has won". How smoothly both disdain for "corporate interests" assailing community values, on the one hand, and utter disdain for the GPL, its politics and its moralism, on the other, roll off the tongue. It’s a cruel, cruel world.
https://writing.kemitchell.com/2016/05/13/What-Open-Source-M...
Copyleft licenses are more complex than permissive licenses by design. GPL-family licenses add idiosyncratic style and politics to that mix. There is a whole body of signals and accepted practices filling in interpretive fissures in that complexity---for FSF projects, for Linux, for MongoDB (AGPL). Consider the recent "enforcement principles" release and the disagreements that led to it. Corporate copyleft users have to do that homework. Corporate permissive users get the night off.