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Discussion on: Choosing Open Source License Wisely🤔

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Alessandro (Ale) Segala

The GPL doesn't forbid any use. The people who wrote the GPL license (Stallman and the FSF) have always been concerned about their ability to modify the software they are running, not preventing commercial use.

What the GPL requires is that if you distribute an application that contains GPL'd code (e.g. a library) in binary form (outside of your organization), then you ALSO must make the source code of the entire app available under the GPL license. Corollaries:

  1. If your app isn't distributed (outside of your organization), then you don't need to release the source code
  2. It's ok to make people pay for getting the binary form of the app. But you must also make the source code available under GPL license (and know that people can re-distribute that).

(Note: I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice)