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Does GPL v3 Alienate Developers?

Posted by Zonk on from the get-thee-hence dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Via Wired, a blog post in which BMC Software's Whurley and Google's Greg Stein agree that the GPL v3 is currently on a path that will alienate developers. Stein has an interesting theory called 'license pressure' which is similar to 'pricing pressure'. 'Due to pressure from developers, all software is moving towards permissive licensing" translation, the GPL and developers are moving in opposite directions ... Developers care about the licenses on the software they use and incorporate into their projects, they like permissive licenses, and they will increasingly demand permissive licenses.'"

2 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Impression by jimstapleton · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not quite - it's designed so that any contributions to it, if the result is distributed, are given back to the community.

    I think this also includes contributions that would allow non-GPLed software to access it.

    Selling the non-GPLed + GPLed = make money off of other peoples work.

    Though, to my knowledge, there isn't an OSS license out that prevents making money off of other peoples work.

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  2. 57% of projects on Freshmeat use GPL by cabalamat3 · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've just checked and 56.82% of projects in Freshmeat use the GPL (24436 out of 43001). Another 3449 projects (8%) use the LGPL.

    Reports of the GPL's demise therefore seem exaggerated.