The Linux Foundation: Not a Friend of Desktop Linux, the GPL, or Openness
The argument from the permissive licensing side:<p>The reason some programmers hold GPL in contempt isn't due to picking a sports team. It's really annoying to have to explain to a true believer (of GPL) that it potentially taints codebases it mixes with.<p>It's also a license that's complex and hasn't been tested in across jurisdictions. So arguing about what happens on a message board isn't fruitful since there is no case law. You may be recommended to "see a lawyer". I've spoken to a few people who have, ultimately the lawyer throws their hands in the air and say we don't have answers to the "What if's"; there isn't case law. And at that, the consensus of a random person on the internet isn't going to hold weight if you're accused of violating the terms of the license.<p>It's hard to pick GPL on the merits. Permissively licensed projects don't seem to be having reciprocity issues. Can't remember the last time I heard these thriving BSD, MIT, Apache2, ISC licensed projects complaining about freeloaders.<p>By the way, really happy Nintendo Switch picked up FreeBSD recently. Looking forward to upstream patches, even knowing it's <i>entirely voluntary</i> for them to give back.<p>Why? Because the <i>potential reciprocity</i> from a big player is better than having a license that obligates reciprocity strictly, even punitively. Which could cause them to look elsewhere, to a proprietary solution. No entity wants to risk their hard work to become a derivative of a smaller project they pull in.