Re: [Trisquel-users] What do you think of Steam coming to Gnu/Linux.

[tegskywalker]

jxself is basically saying having access to the source code makes sure the  
author is playing nice even though the user of the software doesn't own any  
ownership of it. The user can contribute code back and the owner can give  
them attribution if they choose. The owner of the software can choose any  
license he or she wants whenever he or she wants, delete it entirely from the  
internet, or disappear off the face of the earth.

The hope with GPL code is that the code can be forked and stay under a GPL  
licence if for some reason the base source code disapears or goes  
proprietary. A recent example is the GPL licensed MySQL fork MariaDB which  
functions identical to the GPL licended MySQL community edition. If MySQL  
were to ever go proprietary, MariaDB will live on.