| Definitions of 'general public virus' |
The New Hacker's Dictionary |
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1. general public virus
Pejorative name for some versions of the GNU
project copyleft or General Public License (GPL),
which requires that any tools or apps incorporating
copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same anti-proprietary
terms as GNU stuff. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft
‘infects’ software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn
infect other software that reuses any of its code. The Free Software
Foundation's official position is that copyright law limits the scope of
the GPL to “programs textually incorporating significant amounts of
GNU code”, and that the ‘infection’ is not passed on to
third parties unless actual GNU source is transmitted. Nevertheless,
widespread suspicion that the copyleft language is
‘boobytrapped’ has caused many developers to avoid using GNU
tools and the GPL. Changes in the language of the version 2.0 GPL did not
eliminate this problem.
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Definitions of general public virus
