Free?

[Chante]

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.350.1319394157.24802.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Sunday, October 23, 2011 11:06:26 Jose Armando Garcia wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 4:11 AM, Russel Winder <russel at russel.org.uk> 
>> wrote:
>> > It funny how when it comes to licences, viral is used as a 
>> > derogatory
>> > term, but when used in marketing, viral is a positive goal that 
>> > everyone
>> > wants to achieve.
>>
>> That is because you live in a capitalist economy. I don't find it
>> funny at all. I am always shock to hear what people are willing to do
>> and say for the pursuit of a profit. It is even more shocking when
>> technologist and scientist start judging technologies and innovation
>> based on profitability. One can one do? That is the world we live in.
>
> LOL. I don't think that it has anything to do with a capitalist 
> anything. It's
> going purely by the definition of viral. In the case of the GPL, 
> because it's
> viral, it affects everything that it comes into contact wtih.

Not just everyTHING, but also "infects" everyONE who "comes in contact 
with it". Of course one can say the same for programmers who have worked 
for a software company. The risk of having foreign code that is patented 
or viral creeping into a pristine codebase isn't worth the risk (IMO) of 
hiring "tainted" programmers. Young programmers/programmer-wannabes need 
to consider this before signing-on to get that paycheck. Once "tainted", 
they most likely will never be able to become "untainted" (there are 
cures, but they are very unlikely to be enacted).

> It "infects" any
> code that you use it with. Many view the fact that the GPL does this as
> negative. In the case of the market campaign, the message is passed 
> onto
> everyone that it comes into contact with, so the message becomes very
> widespread. This is obviously something that advertisers view as 
> positive. In
> both cases, the term viral refers to how it spreads, not whether it's 
> negative
> or positive. It's just that in the one case, having it spread like that 
> is
> viewed as negative by some, and in the other it's viewed as positive. 
> The word
> is used in essentially the same way in both cases meaning the same 
> thing, and
> it in itself does not make that particular case either good or bad.