“The GPLâ??s major problem is that the right of communication to the public is not provided explicitly amongst the granted rights, and that a clause limits furthermore the granted rights to what is explicitly provided by the license. Moreover, the GPL is known for being the most viral license ever, whereas massive spreading through dynamic linkage is not the aim of the European Commission.”
This is a quote from a Study into Open Source Licensing of software developed by The European Commission entitled “Report on Open Source Licensing of software developed by The European Commission (applied to the CIRCA solution) 16th December, 2004” by Séverine Dusollier, Philippe Laurent & Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz.
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/2623/5585#eupl
Right to communication
The major problem with the GPL is that the right to communication to the public is not explicitly provided in the license?
“The right to communication to the public”? I am unsure which right the authors are referring to. However the GPL is explicit in that once software is licensed under the GPL the source code must be available and the software itself can be used for any purpose.
Most viral
“Moreover, the GPL is known for being the most viral license ever, whereas massive spreading through dynamic linkage is not the aim of the European Commission.” – Once again I am unsure what the authors are concerned about. The point of article 2 (the viral or vaccination effect) is not “massive spreading through dynamic linkage” (which sounds terrifying even if I dont know what it means). The viral effect entails that you cannot take code which has been released under the GPL (made free for all) and use it in part in code which you do not intend to make freely available for all. Simple – but not scary.