[olug] U.K. Urged to hold back on open source

[David Walker]

On Friday 20 June 2003 11:48 am, someone wrote:
> >And other's I'm not thinking of right now.  It may in fact be a non-issue
> >that certain things be "infected" by the GPL inside of corporations.  But
> >you're on a very slippery slope if some things can be GPLed and other's
> >can't, and had better be spending the time and money to evaluate all legal
> >risks in such a case.

I don't see it as being any more dangerous than using proprietary software.  
Both the GPL and all proprietary/closed licenses are equally infectious.  A 
GPL project cannot take code from Windows and place it in their project 
without infection and vice versa.  I basically view the GPL as a free 
proprietary license and I would love it if all code was GPLed.  But since it 
isn't I feel that government produced code should be equally usable by anyone 
making a program in this country.

On a tongue-in-cheek side note.  I'm sure the open source community could 
provide a high quality OpenICBM project but if they are not perfect a 
zero-day exploit could be rather dangerous.