TL;DR: Winamp released their code onto GitHub as open source last month. In doing so they got some of the licenses wrong 
and have been harassed into taking the code down. Now no one can develop on Winamp. Ars Technica journos and users see no problem with this.
You misunderstand the viirality of a GPL flavour. Sure, the LGPL allows you to link your proprietary code with a library. It doesn't allow you to combine it's sources with that of proprietary products.
It also doesn't allow you to include GPL'd code into your monorepo and claim a proprietary (or frankly different) licence. Oh look, a full fat GPLv2:
Modern OSS licensing is fricking gibberish, designed as a way to give the Code of Conduct crew yet another way to exert their dominance over actual contributors and halt all progress without ever writing a line of code. Stack Overflow power users are doing exactly the same shit over there too.
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This r-slurred legal theory remains completely unvalidated in US courts. It's a stupid theory because it's based on the idea that linking with GPL'd code makes the new code a derivative, but that would be disastrous for FOSS because it would make new code linking with proprietary code a derivative of the latter.
The GPL doesn't get to define what works qualify as derivative ones; that's a matter for courts interpreting copyright statutes.
!fosstards
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i hate programmers you guys do not understand law. This has nothing to do with software... the licensens are absolutely valid, without even knowing them
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Who are you replying to? I didn't say the license was invalid. I said that a copyright license (which is what the GPL is) does not get to define what constitutes a derivate work (and then attach itself to said works).
I can't simply write a license that says, "Any book that refers to the chapters or pages of my book is a derivate work and, therefore, licensed under terms I set." That's not how derivative works function in the law.
Also, lawyers can generally spell and use punctuation. Generally.
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it is not a copyright license
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Oh, are you going to say it's a "copyleft" license? That would be helpful because then I'll have confirmation that you're thoroughly r-slurred and have no understanding of how to distinguish between the ideology behind it versus the governing law.
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no, this has nothing to do with "copyright" as a legal term
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You really need to explain what you mean, then, because it still smells like bullshit to me -- and I've spent decades working with lawyers on license compliance for due diligence.
The primary teeth of the GPL come from the contingencies it applies to redistribution. This is, in fact, a copyright license given that it's allowing what copyright denies by default sans license. Without copyright, the GPL wouldn't have anything to license.
The GPL does not license trademarks, and its only treatment of patents is to unencumber the copyright license that it primarily is.
Its claims to apply to linked code originate from a legal theory that linking code creates a derivative work -- under copyright -- and that the GPL can then impose its terms on the linked code.
So, tell us please, what you think the legal theory underpinning the GPL is if not resting on copyright.
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Has the GPL won any major cases?
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Yes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation
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I remember them not doing much, but apparently that's wrong. It was years ago, and I can't remember which particular license it was.
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