I can assure you that legal teams in studios are just as aware as those in the tech field, even with the (for the most part) distinct lack of apparent software distribution.

Even if it's just for internal consumption, legal likes to know what's going on and where it might impact them later.

However, the GPL and other copyleft software will not for the most part have much of an effect on studios unless they sharing some of their IP they've created with the broader community, partners, and/or proprietary software vendors.

GPL may as well mean radioactive as far as legal is concerned.

A friend worked at a company where they banned GIMP as they feared that editing logos and other trademarks in it could invalidate them.

Even working for a tech company, I don't think I would suggest using anything GPL as it would cause a fuss.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty certain that's not how the GPL works. It has no effect on the content you create using the tool. It places restrictions on redistribution of the code itself. I don't think there are any limits on what you do with gimp or blender, unless you are modifying its code and redistributing it.

Yes the GPL doesn't apply to work created by GPL software. I've heard people in companies be worried about it though because they misunderstand "using GPL libraries" as applying to work created as a product of them, rather than strictly software.

The Blender Foundation is quite upfront about this though to prevent misunderstandings. It's directly addressed on the page that explains the license: https://www.blender.org/about/license/

The case in point here though was GIMP not Blender. I'm not sure whether they provide or provided such clarification.

They do in their FAQ: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#can-i-use-gimp-commer...

That is correct, but there are plenty of lawyers who interpret things incredibly overly-conservatively to save their own ass, just in case.

If you're a senior enough manager and have a legitimate business reason then you can often push back enough and get them to give in, but it's really a question of whether it's worth your time and effort internally.

Tons of widely used software -- Linux, for one -- is GPL.

Of course - the GPL thing is just FUD. The company I work for (Red Hat) sells tons of GPL software to small and large companies, including huge media/entertainment companies, and none of them is talking about how the GPL is "radioactive".

Because libc is licensed under LGPL and not GPL. GPL in and of itself isn't bad if you're not developing code that links it in. LGPL is also widely used in the CG industry (Qt etc...). If Blender licensed their API under different terms it would greatly open things up.

The current version of GPL is 100% toxic at many places I know of - this is not overly conservative lawyers - you have all sorts of rules around releasing your encryption keys - secure boot chains etc - it’s a no go and viral

Studios write a LOT of custom code for their pipeline and tools. If you were to go to ILM or Dreamworks or WDAS and watch someone use Maya there, it would look COMPLETELY different from what you see at home.

Given that, I'm not surprised that the (not-always-technical) lawyers are worried about GPL.

Current version of GPL is an absolute no go for many larger places - even Ubuntu ended up dropping it for parts of stack - risks are way too high

> even Ubuntu ended up dropping it for parts of stack

"even" Ubuntu? Are you implying that Canonical are some kind of champion of free software?

Yes - they ship open source and are generally more comfortable with open source licensing because they have much more experience with it.

Expecting an entertainment industry org (which were specially attacked in latest version of GPL around DRM) to be comfortable seems far fetched.

There are definitely management types that see "free" software as "I can't yell at the vendor if something goes wrong." I've seen this many times in government contracts. It's a CYA move IMHO. Even if the vendor is never going to fix the bugs you find, you can at least blame them for not delivering on time.

Of course it's even more silly when you consider that you're never going to be making patches to Maya, so in theory nothing is lost on the Blender side here.

Maya has support licenses (as do most commercial DCCs). Studios can get Autodesk to patch Maya for you and give you custom builds.

Studios are very much tech firms themselves.

Quite a few have released commercial software, share proprietary software with partner/vendor companies , or contribute to OSS.

As with any tech company, the GPL is a very unwelcome license for fear of how far reaching it can be.