The bottom line seems to be that the street between copyleft and
non-copyleft free software only runs one way: copyleft can incorporate
non-copyleft and retain its identity, but not the other way around.
I.e., the GPL's hegemony extends to non-copyleft free software as much
as to proprietary software. Accurate?
Actually I suppose we would say that there is no street between copyleft
and proprietary, so the relationship is not entirely parallel. Ok, how
about a little ascii art. :-)
copyleft <---- non-copyleft ----> proprietary
| ^ | ^
| | | |
`--' `--'
- copyleft can incorporate copyleft and non-copyleft software
- non-copyleft can incorporate non-copyleft software
- proprietary can incorporate non-copyleft software
So copyleft gets two-thirds of the pie, while the others only get
one-third, so to speak. And of course, this refers to incorporation of
code rather than external usage via pipes, etc.
chad
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