<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div>> i heard, and then read, that GPL patches CAN be run in closed source systems running libpd, etc.</div><div>it's just GPL externals that you can't use without sharing the code. <br></div><div><br></div><div>Whether this is true or not, I think it's largely irrelevant.</div><div><br></div><div>If company X is a reputable company selling proprietary software, their lawyers will consider <br></div><div dir="ltr">anything licensed "GPL" toxic and avoid it like the plague.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">If company X is a disreputable company, they're just going to bundle whatever they want <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5688">regardless of what the license is. See all those cheapo IoT devices that ship patched versions <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5684">of Linux without releasing their changes to the Linux source.</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5685"><br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5686">There _might_ be some edge case where a naive but otherwise good-faith developer wants to <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5687">sell proprietary X and tries to "roll their own" interpretation of the GPL to suit their distribution <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5692">case. But applying engineering principles to a legal document will almost always get you whatever <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5696">it is you're looking for, so I'm not sure the license text actually matters that much in such an <br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5698">edge case.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492959942048_5710">-Jonathan<br></div></div></body></html>