Well, what I love about GPL is that any derivative work using GPL-licensed work also needs to be GPL licensed, which guarantees that derivative work is open-source, i.e. when requested the source of it must be available.
That's a great concept! But is it limited to software only?
Let's say that I have written a thesis which explains something which may have a lot usages in engineering, computing etc. Is it possible to license it something like GPL so that everything using my thesis must be open-sourced, for example, machines using it must have a GPL-like license, make their internal structure available and other machines using those machines either and so on; or software using my thesis must be GPL licensed?
In short, is it possible to apply the philosophy of GPL to non-software things and information?
Clarification
Its answer is for non-programming, it maybe non-hardware too. Because, in short, I wonder whether I can use open-source philosophy (especially GPL) for non-programming purposes.
Well, my question has a broad domain but its answer is simply "yes" or "no". If it's yes you should give me a example, if it's no you should explain me why.