The Price of Free Software

According to a July 2004 article from Modern Practice, companies in the business of developing proprietary software that incorporate open source code need to be aware of the viral tainting effects found in certain open source licenses, such as the GNU General Public License. Such licenses typically include terms and conditions that require the disclosure of all proprietary source code that is combined with the open source code. Thus, if a company's proprietary program incorporates part or all of a GNU GPL program, the GNU GPL's terms could be argued to require that all source code - including proprietary code - be divulged to all persons along the prospective chain of distribution.