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From: =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Outdated and license-violating Java code snippets on Stack Overflow
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 19:12:07 -0400
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On 7/31/2017 8:11 AM, Eric Douglas wrote:
> On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 8:30:00 AM UTC-4, crag...@gmail.com wrote:

>> 3) Stack Overflow applies CC BY-SA 3.0 license to both text and
>> code snippets on the posts. The CC BY-SA 3.0 is quite permissive.
>> So, for example, if I copy a code snippet from an open source
>> project that has GPL license but I do not include the original
>> license in the copied snippet, this snippet may appear to be
>> protected by CC BY-SA 3.0 instead of its original GPL license. We
>> have performed another study using code clone detection tools to
>> detect SO snippets that were copied from 111 open source projects.
>> We found at least 357 of them violate their original licenses.
> Doesn't the GPL license say anyone is free to copy their code and use
> in house?  Anyone who cares about license violations likely already
> has an army of lawyers searching for violations, and anyone using an
> open license isn't going to care unless someone is putting it in code
> they're selling.  All the code I've written is only used for the
> company's own internal application.
Using GPL code for inhouse only is rather unproblematic.

But using GPL embedded in something distributed to external
entities comes with certain obligations.

SO snippets may also be used in the latter case.

GPL license does not prevent the user of the code from
selling the resulting product for money - they just need
to comply with the GPL license.

And FSF do enforce GPL terms in general.

But I suspect they may not try and enforce it for a single
code snippet.

Arne