In fact, it amazes me how many people don't read the GPL license itself but take Microsoft's misinterpretation of it as gospel.
First: NO ONE IS FORCED OR REQUIRED to put any software they write under the GPL. Doing so is an entirely voluntary and humanitarian act, a generous contribution to the community commons.
Second: The major purpose of the GPL is make sure the source code will always be available to all who wish it. The GPL prevents exploitation or theft of code placed under it. Exploitation is taking code that has been placed into to the community commons, modifying it, releasing it only in binary form as propriatary "IP", free or for a fee, and not returning any code to the commons from which it was taken.
Third: If a coder writes an app, A, and put it under the GPL, you can take the source to app A and modify it all you want to produce app B. You can use App B for you own personal use all you want. You are under NO obligation to release or share any of your source for B UNLESS you try to sell B verion or post the binary of B in a public forum. If you sell B, or post its binary in a public forum, then the GPL says your customer is entitled to ask for and receive the source for A AND the source B, or just the source for B if B is all inclusive. Your customer then has the same liberties to use B as the orginal author gave you when you decided to use the code for A. This is the point that folks who hate the GPL don't like. They'd love to take your source, build on it, and sell a propriatary verion of it without sharing anything with you are the community. In other words, they'd love to PIRATE your software. The old adage: do unto others as ... is for suckers, in their eyes.
Forth: The idea that if the United States government adopted Open Source GPL code the national security would be put at risk is utterly ridiculous. Microsoft's code is propriatary, and most of the source has not been revealed, except to the Russian crackers who drained Micrsoft's sourcesafe code tree dry a couple summers ago. All versions of Microsoft's OS are noted for their lack of security. In fact, Microsoft CEO Jim Allchin admitted under oath, in court, that certion parts of Win32 are an extreme security risk and unfixable. Since the majority of government agencies and offices already use various versions of the Microsoft OS, a rhetorical question arises: How could the government security become any worse with Open Source? In can't. Of course, black hats can look at the source to GPL code and discern security holes, just like the Russian crackers can with their copies of the the WinXX OS code. The advantage of GPL code is that not only the black hats look at the source, so do the white hats, and in greater numbers. Not only that, if a security hole is found in WinXX OS one has to take Microsoft's word that the patch, when and if it finally arrives, fixes the hole and doesn't introduce other holes, or break features in the app, because Microsoft fights any release of information relating to security holes or bugs in its software. Security holes and bugs in GPL software are usually fixed very quickly, some in hours, most within a couple days.
Most 'security' companies have bent over for this blackmail, returning the WinXX computing environment to the early period of the Unix age, when Unix vendors had the attitude then that Microsoft has now. It may have been a help to the Unix vendors bottom line, but it cost the consumer dearly, as the same policy does WinXX users today.
I submit that security holes in Microsoft places the national secrets of the USA at greater risk than if the govenrment adopted a "GPL only" policy. That this is true is easily seen by the mass movement of govnernment of other countries to requiring adoption of Open Source GPL software applictions like Linux, OpenOffice, etc... They have decided that they don't want the CIA OR NSA using propriatary WInXX backdoors to steal their secrets, nor do they want to put their secrets at risk to Microsoft's patching paradigm, which has proven to be wholely inadequate and a popular grazing pasture for black hats around the globe.
Truely my last word...
JLK
