@sally Proprietary software developers will come up with any excuse why they use a proprietary license.

The problem isn't a lack of lawyers - if nmap actually licensed GPLv2-only and a company infringes such license for profit, nmap would just need to tell them that their license has automatically terminated and that they may only continue to redistribute the software as proprietary software once they purchase the exception and that maximal damages will be sought if they continue to infringe copyright for profit.

Lawyers are expensive, but nmap doesn't seem short on money considering their sale of exceptions and even if they don't have money, they will easily be able to get copyright lawyers lining up to offer no-win-no fee copyright enforcement (as they'll gladly take such an easy win case and wack on a fat DOUBLE fee at the end).

The lawyer in the end would get all the damages money, but that would set an example.


Companies only come up with "strange (incorrect) interpretations" of the GPLv2 - if that was the actual concern, they would just relicense to AGPLv3-or-later and offer their exception to that, as no company has been able to come up with an excuse why they don't need to comply with that license.