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.'"

Comments

Why I don't like the GPL3

[larry bagina]

Much of my programming knowledge (especially API usage) came from looking at source code (this was before "Open Source" and the GPL was so popular). I was interested in learning and using, not redistributing, so the license didn't matter. Heck, once I learned assembly language, I didn't even need the source code.

I personally prefer a BSD-style license. For some purposes, a GPL (never closable) license is preferable. I think we've all heard the arguments enough times. But the GPL 3 isn't about sharing code, it's about enforcing a philosophy that I don't agree with.