Comment by nickpsecurity
6 hours ago
A gift is when you do something without expecting anything in return, esp compensation.
If I use GPL'd code, I have to keep releasing my modifications for free because it's mandated. I have to do that even if I do 1000 hours of labor but they gave me 30 min of it. So, it's also near-infinite work required in return for finite work they did. And I have to bind others to this with my own work.
That's not someone giving me a gift. I'm not sure what to call that except a collective work with permanent obligations for all parties. It's more like a job or corporate charter or something. I like another person's claim that it's creating property with requirements for those using it (which copyright certainly does).
> If I use GPL'd code, I have to keep releasing my modifications for free because it's mandated.
Pedantically, only recipients of your updated binary are owed updated source, so if you're not distributing that binary to the whole world, you're not required to release updated source to the whole world. Kind of a nitpick, but maybe not.