The GPL is meant to be viral... it infects other projects so as to open up software ecosystems. The open source movement came out of a time when nearly everything was proprietary and locked up.

Tivo-ization really woke up a lot of people to the dangers of proprietary lock in and abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

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Jensson 5 days ago | parent [-]

> The GPL is meant to be viral

But that also makes people not wanna bother with it. People in the middle who doesn't care either way will be very apprehensive of putting in a license virus in their project.

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FuriouslyAdrift 5 days ago | parent [-]

You should always know what patents and licenses are part of your project/product.

	▲	me-vs-cat 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		This is both true and absurd. True because that's how the system actually works today. Absurd because monopolies on ideas -- specifically patents and software licenses as mentioned here -- have absurd durations.