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Survey Says GPLv3 Is Shunned
willdavid writes in to note a survey of open source developers conducted by Evans Data that indicates a real rift in the community over GPLv3. The survey was based on in-depth interviews with 380 open source developers and no estimated margin of error was given. "Just 6 percent of developers working with open-source software have adopted the new GNU General Public License version 3... Also, two-thirds say they will not adopt GPLv3 anytime in the next year, and 43 percent say they will never implement the new license. Almost twice as many would be less likely to join a project that uses GPLv3 than would be likely to join... [Evans Data's CEO said] 'Developers are confused and divided about [the restrictions GPLv3 imposes], with fairly equal numbers agreeing with the restrictions, disagreeing with them, or thinking they will be unenforceable.'"
Those restrictions are for your freedom. It is important to take freedom away to protect it. Truly allowing freedom would allow freedom to be taken away, and we can't allow that, so we've taken away some freedom to allow true freedom to flourish.
I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't understand that perfectly.
And I'm sure I'll get modded down, but before you do that, read through my first paragraph carefully and tell me what I've said differently than the GNU people.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Oh dear! Another rift in the community, etc. Really, how many articles of this type have been posted to Slashdot in the last few weeks?
And the statement "Just 6 percent of developers working with open-source software have adopted the new GNU General Public License version 3" is obviously false, since the vast majority of GPL-licensed software have copyright notices that say that the software is available "under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" - which includes GPL version 3.
What is this "Evans Data Corporation"? It would be interesting to see any other press releases they have written.
No doubt because it wasn't a random sample in the first place, so a "margin of error", which reflects the sampling error, would be meaningless.
Unless, of course, all the commits were "GPLv2 or later", in which case the project was effectively already under the GPLv3 from the moment it was released.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Not necessarily. GPL version 3 only provisions do not apply to it, unless it is changed to be licensed under GPL 3 (only, or "or later").
The basic problem with this article is that it confuses Open Source with Free Software. They probably polled BSD, MSPL, Mozilla, etc developers and asked if they were planning to switch to the GPLv3, and as would be expected, most said "no". To me, it's just the obvious restated as something insightful.
They SHOULD all be counted as GPL2, because until they are explicitly moved to GPL3, they are not GPL3.
If the GPLv4 came out next week and said "to distribute software under this license, you have to send RMS a case of beer", you could distribute "GPLv2 or later" software by either providing its source (the GPLv2/v3 option) or by sending RMS a case of beer.
Thanks. That's just about the best example I've ever seen illustrating why the "or any later version" clause is a terrible idea that nobody should ever use.
A more pertinent version might be this: suppose in GPLv10, there is a clause allowing binary-only distribution of work derived from GPL code, as long as you donate $N to the FSF (for some sufficiently large value of N).
Of course it's impossible to imagine this happening in the next 20 years or so. But the length of a copyright term is such that GPL revisions will continue to be released long after RMS is dead. The "Or any later version" clause should give anyone who thinks about it the heebie jeebies.
Linus is a great coder,but he is a bonehead of a tactician and insists on living in the past. Both those things are truthiness, said without malice, just as obvious observations. You need the long view and to keep your head out of the sand. You may want to ignore reality, but in $oviet deep-pocket$ amerikkka, reality is NOT going to ignore YOU....
Well, yes, if it is not currently licensed with the restrictions in the GPLv3 (but merely allows other people to relicense their own redistribution that way), it is inaccurate to describe it as a GPLv3 project. I mean, by your argument, every project under a GPLv3-compatible license (or, presumably, in the public domain like SQLite) should be counted as a GPLv3 project because someone could conceivably redistribute a derivative of it under the GPLv3 at some point in the future.
The GPL is all about preventing commercial use. If you bothered to think about the license(s) after reading, you would realize that.
You're misinterpreting the words "preventing commercial use".
What you really mean is "steal someone else's code, make a few modifications, and sell it as your own." That's basically stealing, because you've added no real value.
What I mean by "commercial use" is "a company is allowed to use GPL code and incorporate it into their own product, as long as they release the changes to customers. That way they don't have to reinvent the wheel."
If you're Linksys, for example, it's cheaper and easier to use Linux as the base OS on your router, rather than writing your own OS from scratch. But part of the bargain is that you have to share the modifications you make with your customers. This doesn't mean you have to provide your customers with schematics to the device, or even the source code to proprietary software that runs on top of Linux, but the portion that you borrowed from someone else (Linux), you have to provide the changes.
However, if you're CrapSoft Inc., and want to make a special version of Linux to sell to the government for a juicy contract, but you want to keep your changes secret so the customer is dependent on you, that's not allowed. Do you honestly see a problem with that? If so, I suggest you get to work writing BSD-licensed workalikes to all GPL software, because you have no right to tell other software developers under what terms they're allowed to share and distribute their code.
How many ways can a survey be skewed, either deliberately or accidentally? Lots. More than anyone likely cares to count.
However, the question of the survey is entirely valid, and I think the results are likely true as a philosophy.
Lots of people in the community are really unhappy with the bent of the GPL3. That's the take home message here. Is it 65% or 63% or 97%? I don't really know or care, because that doesn't change the fact that it _is_ controversial among the very group that it's supposed to empower.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I'm a GPL fan, but I don't buy this user vs. developer dichotomy. Only developers care about the license terms attached to copyrighted source code; these terms mean nothing to end users.
The difference between the GPL and BSD license terms is that GPL terms protect the original developer's access to work derived from their own, BSD terms do not. GPL terms provides that you increase the size of the free software ecology, BSD terms do not. Neither license prevents the original developer from producing and distributing proprietary versions of their own code of course; but the GPL does prevent subsequent developers from doing so without negotiating terms with the original author. I use the GPL to restrict your freedom to use my software in a proprietary manner. Do I want to promote "less freedom"? Hell no. I do this because I want to encourage other developers to license their code in a similar manner. How am I, as a developer, "more free" when I cannot use the code you derive from my own? You do nothing to promote freedom when you do not freely license your work. When you do freely license your work, your work may benefit developers the world over.
The GPL is more free. The GPL is for developers.
It doesn't seem fair to attack Microsoft with GPL V3 without also going after Google. Google gets to use GPL software without ever having to release source because they're not selling software, they're selling services. If Microsoft did that GPL V4 would come out faster than you can say Free Software.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre