This is mini educational thread about how users and developers should be aware when dealing with evil megacorp companies:
GPL went into big enemies , and of course enemies like Microsoft :
“Free software,” like free societies, has its enemies. Microsoft has waged a war against the GPL, warning whoever will listen that the GPL is a “dangerous” license.
Reference: Free Software, Free Society (fsfs3) page 8
Also Dr.RMS mentioned that again in 2004:
Richard Stallman, Free Software Lecture, Australian National University, 2004
Apple another major enemy to GNU GPL:
Reclaim your freedom with free libre software now - Richard Stallman of Free Software Movement
Another enemy i want to add which is Google. Its common that Google using a GPL license software called Linux Kernel in their android products (Though John Sullivan, Executive Director of FSF in an Interview with Bryan Lunduke in 2017 said: “There are rumors about Google waning to change the kernel on android, There is another Google Kernel Project Fuchsia”
Reference: John Sullivan, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation - Recorded at LinuxFest NW, 2017)
But we look at some of their folks what they request from others in google code:
Are you willing / would it be possible to allow me to use this project under a more developer friendly license like BSD / MIT instead of GPL?
Reference: https://github.com/josecl/cool-php-captcha/issues/31
and sadly look at that poor developer issued it as a defect. (good thing he didnt change his project license and left it as it is)
BSD,Apache,MIT…etc they have the common vulnerability which is anyone can take the code and close its source without benefiting the developer and/or the community. Which GPL has a good protection against that and/or any Copyleft license as well.
Good examples of evil companies used this method to its favor are:
-
Netflix used FreeBSD and closed it to its favor (read about The BSD License Problem) .
-
IBM used Apache and closed it to its favor (listen to Dr.RMS describing the issue here).
This is just small scrape , if anyone have more evidences and willing to add it then thats will be great as well.