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Now, if you ask me how many companies are using GPLed source code in proprietary products, the answer isn't so much that I think no one or few are doing it, the answer is more that I don't know how many are doing it. Without further evidence that's the best I can say. It's more fair to say nothing than to assume culpability. I do know there were some cases where companies were caught, but they came off more as thorough scams than legitimate endeavors, like CherryOS. And they didn't get away with it.
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Then again we could argue that most of the companies or programmers using GPL for their propietary/closed source code, are actually just linking to a LGPL library, and as such they circumvent the problem.
In any case, I have several friends from my university who work at M$. The one I talk the most to works in something akin to the programming quality control department (aka the QC, aka the bug catchers
), and he often complains on how it is always a mess to navigate through the spaghetti code that Windows XP is at times.
-Hey Proto! That doesn't have anything to do with propietary code using GPL code without respecting the license!
Dunno, ask Schumi. In any case I'd say that the Free Software foundation should raise awareness on the restrictions of GPL'ed code and how it differs from other licenses to avoid this problems in the first place. Most programmers don't willingly break the GPL license, it's more than they just don't know the difference between the GPL and other open source licenses. Also, Intellectual property and informatics law should be a mandatory course in any programming related major. (because of this and many other reasons. I cannot imagine any other mainstream profession that breaks the law so routinely as that of a programmer).
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Geez, in any case I've missed a lot of fun in this board in the last few days it'd seem. @ruantec sure has short fuse these days
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Last edited by Proto; June 9th, 2009 at 16:35..