General Public Virus
<software, legal> A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project
copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or
application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on
the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects"
software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that
reuses any of its code.
Copyright law limits the scope of the GPL to "programs textually incorporating
significant amounts of GNU code" so GPL is only passed on if actual GNU source
is transmitted. This used to be the case with the Bison parser skeleton until
its licence was fixed.
http://org.gnu.de/manual/bison/html_chapter/bison_2.html#SEC2.
[Jargon File]
(1999-07-14)
Nearby terms:
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