Comment by forrestthewoods
7 years ago
When I was in games the moment I saw the letters GPL was the moment I closed the tab. GPL code is too dangerous to even read. Stay far far away and hope no one screws up and poisons your entire codebase.
7 years ago
When I was in games the moment I saw the letters GPL was the moment I closed the tab. GPL code is too dangerous to even read. Stay far far away and hope no one screws up and poisons your entire codebase.
But that's the point, isn't it? Are you developing free software? By all means use this GPL library! You are developing proprietary software? Well, too bad, you don't get to use this code. Either develop it by yourself or look somewhere else. Not that what I'm saying is contrary to what you said, I'm just pointing out that it's by design.
What the parent poster mentioned is not using a GPL library, but merely looking at its code. The thinking is that once someone reads some piece of code (no matter its license), they're "tainted" forever, and any code they ever write in the future could be treated as "subconscious copying" of that code they had read. If one is afraid of including any code under the GPL (or any other specific license), and one subscribes to that "subconscious copying" theory, it makes sense that one would avoid even getting near code under that license like the plague.