It's frustrating when people with a definite bias attempt to write ostensibly objective reviews. At the least, if you know you have a bias you should go out of your way to ensure that the things you say about the objects of your bias are in fact true. Unfortunately, there are a number of inaccuracies regarding the GPL in this article.
At least twice it's stated that you are not allowed to charge money for GPL'd software. This is a very common fallacy about the GPL: anyone making an effort to research the subject must surely have come across this canard and seen it debunked. There is absolutely nothing in the GPL that forbids anyone from charging any amount of money they like for GPL'd software. And that's just as it should be, since the GPL is not about money at all (free-as-in-beer): it is ONLY about freedom (free-as-in-speech). Of course, realistically speaking there is a severe limit to how much one can charge for GPL'd software, because you are required to provide the source code and all the rights conferred upon you by the GPL, to the people who purchase the software from you. Which means you might be able to sell the first copy for $100,000, but the purchaser can turn right around and post the entire thing on her website and there's nothing you can do about it. Nevertheless, the statement that you cannot charge for GPL'd software is manifestly false (there are now and have been for a long time, companies charging for GPL'd software!)
The second major error in the article is the use of the term "commercial software", or software that costs money, when what the author really meant was "proprietary software", or software where source is not provided and the user is not allowed to make or share copies. These two things are quite orthogonal.
Of course, the author is absolutely correct when he says that it's quite tricky to combine GPL'd software and proprietary software... that's the entire point of the GPL, after all! In other words, this is a feature not a bug. Consider that if you think you need to hire a lawyer to work with the GPL, you're probably doing something against the wishes of those who created the software.
Finally, the author implies that if only people understood the GPL better, they'd run screaming into the bushes rather than license their software with it. Personally, I've not seen many cases at all of people choosing the GPL inadvisedly because they didn't realize what they were doing, then wanting to change it later. I'd be interested to know where all these mis-licensed applications and frustrated software authors are! I suspect the vast majority of the software developers who choose the GPL understand it far better than the author.
There IS, however, one critical problem with the GPL which the author doesn't even touch on: the GPLv2 is 'way too picky about which licenses it is friendly with. This makes it very difficult to combine with other open source licenses. Very open licenses such as MIT are fine, but almost anything else conflicts with the GPL. I have definitely known open source projects to get into messes where they want to combine GPL'd software with software covered under other open source licenses and haven't been able to do it. It seems that this area is one that is getting a lot of scrutiny in GPLv3, currently under review. Hopefully this will become less of an issue in the future.
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