My own company's lawyers consider the GPLv3 toxic and not allowed at all for company use in any software we create - that's enough for me.
I have yet to see a single "professional IP lawyer" who knew more about GPL than an average IT pro. The was majority simply puts forwards claims without doing a minute of actual research on GPL
Read the slide in the first few seconds. Does that look familiar to you? https://youtu.be/okEQt-Rla7o?t=863
That is the mental image of your company's lawyers when you ask about GPLv3.
This discussion sometimes feels like like the PHB telling Dilbert to go base the product on Oracle because of an article in CIO Monthly ("written by an EXPERT!") says it's the best database.
Isn't that often because the GPL would require you to release your source code? Which is different from possible patent problems? I can understand why companies don't want to release their source code, but at least it's clear ("release your code and you can't be sued"), right?
> My own company's lawyers consider the GPLv3 toxic and not allowed at all for company use in any software we create - that's enough for me.
Don't just blindly defer to lawyers. Yes, including GPL source code in a proprietary product could sink your company's business model. But using a GPL webserver is no threat. Nor using Linux as a set top box to run your local application (Roku). Nor using GCC to compile the program. (Alot of Playstation 1 games used GCC.)
Your own company's lawyers may be very ignorant on the GPL and it's benefits.
They may simply not understand and are relying on other people to inform them. (I believe Microsoft's old attacks against the GPL used the word toxic.)
I knew a contract lawyer who called the GPL 'very restrictive'. I pointed out the Windows EULA. He never really read it to understand it's far more restrictive terms. He never really looked at a EULA through a lawyer's lens and how much his business would suffer if the the terms were actually exercised. Nor that he didn't have to accept the GPL to use GPL software. Only to redistribute it. I doubt he could find that permissiveness in an EULA.
Lawrence Lessig made a few comments that his lawyer friends couldn't understand how Creative Commons licenses worked. People that have never met each other had legally agreed to binding license. This was in the early 2000's.
