General Public Virus

software, legal A pejorative name for some versions of the

GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL),

which requires that any tools or application programs

incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on

the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the

copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which

may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.

Copyright law limits the scope of the GPL to "programs

textually incorporating significant amounts of GNU code" so

GPL is only passed on if actual GNU source is transmitted.

This used to be the case with the Bison parser skeleton

until its licence was fixed.

.

[Jargon File]

(1999-07-14)