[yeahforsureman]

Or lacking adequate case law, that's what the FSF et al. would want you to believe, anyhow. Although a bit vaguely drafted in this respect, the copyleft effect of GPL depends on the concept of a derivative work under copyright law. It would be a bit far-fetched to claim that in your example, the combination of the function and the codebase is a derivative of the function you incorporated.

Anyway, because the fact that people think GPL is that extensive is enough to create unnecessary problems, I too prefer MPL, where the copyleft scope is defined very clearly for its use case.

[reshlo]

I don’t think it matters whether the GPL can successfully be enforced against the example you describe. The license’s author intended that it could be, and that is what matters.

A philosophical disagreement with the license’s intent shouldn’t be overlooked just because the license might not actually be enforceable.