Issues of GNU General Public License

The GNU GPL may be good for software intended to be free, but it is generally detrimental to the software industry.

It is a child of Free Software Foundation.  If software was developed largely by people as a hobby, the GPL would make a lot of sense.  It in some sense devalues intellectual properties.  Imagine if movies were not protected by copyright, and could be freely copied and distributed, then we would see only movies made by hobbyists and non-profit organizations.   Would this be good for our society? 

Free software development should be fully allowed, or even encouraged, but not imposed on developers.  The GPL imposes freeness on software that happens to use code under GPL. For example, if an application with a million lines of code uses a library of 1000 lines of code, and the library is under GPL, the application must be under GPL too by the terms of GPL.  No wonder some people call the GPL a cancer or virus.

Reinventing the wheel should be avoided whenever possible in software development.  If an open source library has certain functions needed by an app, the app should use it.  The GPL essentially prevents commercial software from using code under it unless the app is made to be under GPL. The GPL compliance has a lot of absurdities.

The general advice for commercial software developers regarding the GPL is: stay away form anything under it. However, the GNU Lesser General Public License may be acceptable to commercial software.

The GPL is anti-productivity and anti-innovation in some sense.