Eventually every successful IDE becomes extensible. Up to that point GPL is perfectly fine.
As soon as IDE provides extensibility one starts having problems with GPL and it's viral nature with linking.
GPL is forcing IDE into a "sandbox" where the whole distro must be GPL-compatible at the point of distribution. The workaround is often with the expense of user experience where one has to separately install extensions just because of licesnsing.
Re:Light Table is in YCS12
by AlexHamilton on Monday May 21, 2012 @11:11AM
(#4003200)
The Mozilla Public License v2 is a good compromise, as it is less aggressive than the GPL on links (it operates at the file level)
For a project like this, the GPL makes the most sense: an IDE needs people who use it and people who contribute to the core project much more than it needs people who use its code in proprietary projects of their own.