While the GPL (any version) is not a trivial license, any hacker who is capable of writting a non-trivial program should be able to grasp it in an hour.
Perhaps "should", but they don't.
Probobly for the same reason they don't write well written programs... ;-)
Still, it is a easy license compared to most other licenses, and the general ideas are easily grasped by the four freedoms of free software.
Compared to most other licences? I'm not sure about that. It's more complex than most BSD-like and Apache-style licences, which are a significant proportion of "other".
I suppose that is what I get for being vauge, by most other licenses, I was refering to non-free software licenses.
Not everyone agrees that the right to see software source on someone else's machine you're using is a free software right; I'm not particularly sure I do.
I think that this is no different than a machine that I own that prohibits me from upgrading it.
Whereas I think it's no different to using a shell on a shared server.
Well, then I can only assume that you think what Tivio did is ok? Since that is one way to look at it, a hardware with a shell that the company is providing access to.
That's a shame if it's not, they did build in a clause to make it compatible:
"You may also choose to redistribute modified versions of this program under any version of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License version 3 or higher, so long as that version of the GNU GPL includes terms and conditions substantially equivalent to those of this license."
Scratch what I wrote after this, I thought this was from the GPLv3...