DEV Community

Discussion on: GNU Public License is all but free and you should never use it

Collapse
 
tanzislam profile image
Tanzinul Islam

I think there's an important point to be made: the GNU GPL isn't about protecting the developers' (sender's) rights, so much as it is about protecting the receivers' (especially end-users') rights. It attempts to, at whatever cost, ensure that the receiving party can use, study, adapt, extend the program for their own use. They can also share the software, extensions and derivations, but at that point they become the sender and must abide by the rights of their receivers.

That's all there is to it, really. The GPL isn't against any particular form of use, but when sharing / distributing / "conveying" is involved, the receivers' rights are protected. It allows any use as long as the property of accountability / auditability is preserved. It's free for the user, not (necessarily) for the developer.