Z:gnu-www-ja-rms-nyu-2001-transcript--78b333-See, the GNU GPL says that if/en

See, the GNU GPL says that if you take code, and some code out of a GPL-covered program, and add some more code to make a bigger program, that whole program has to be released under the GPL. But you could put other separate programs on the same disk (of either kind, hard disk, or CD), and they can have other licenses. That's considered mere aggregation, and, essentially, just distributing two programs to somebody at the same time is not something we have any say over. So, in fact, it is not true &mdash; sometimes, I wish it were true &mdash; that if a company uses a GPL-covered program in a product that the whole product has to be free software. It's not &mdash; it doesn't go to that range &mdash; that scope. It's the whole program. If there are two separate programs that communicate with each other at arm's length &mdash; like by sending messages to each other &mdash; then, they're legally separate, in general. So, these companies, by adding non-free software to the system, are giving the users, philosophically and politically, a very bad idea. They're telling the users, &ldquo;It is OK to use non-free software. We're even putting it on this as a bonus.&rdquo;