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sunshowersyesterday at 6:30 PM2 repliesview on HN

There are good reasons the so-called "BSD zealots" won the so-called "culture war", such as the definition of a derived work being largely uncharted territory. Did you know that there's a compelling legal argument that the GPL attaches to programs talking to each other via JSON data structures?

I think MPL 2.0 is the ideal kind of copyleft, because of its scope being very clear.


Replies

lmmtoday at 1:56 AM

> Did you know that there's a compelling legal argument that the GPL attaches to programs talking to each other via JSON data structures?

The GPL attaches to programs that are legally derivative works. So does any other license that doesn't explicitly grant the right to prepare and distribute derivative works, such as the overwhelming majority of commercial/proprietary licenses. The issue is with the overall copyright/legal system, not with the GPL specifically, and given that most entities are comfortable using at least some non-BSD programs it doesn't seem to worry people in practice.

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kstrauseryesterday at 9:18 PM

There is no such compelling legal argument. That’s an extraordinary idea with zero precedent or support.

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