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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.'"
It is much easier for new projects to start out with GPLv3 than old projects to convert. Unless the committers transfer copyrights to a central body like in the case of the gnu tools and FSF, it is hard to move to another license if not bordering on impossible.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
who actually commissioned the study??? cos studies don't just happen by themselves... they cost money
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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.
The GPL isn't about preventing commercial use. If you bothered to read the license(s) you would know that.
It's about preserving users' freedoms. If a commercial entity uses GPL code and distributes that to end users (even paying ones), they're obligated to give them access to the source code. It's that simple. GPLv3 just adds some extra clauses to prevent companies from weaseling around the spirit of these simple terms by using any software patents or the like.
If you don't care about commercial entities taking your code, making changes, distributing it to users, and then refusing to give those users (which may include you) access to their modified code, then release your code under the BSD license, or into the public domain. It's your choice. Stop complaining about other peoples' choices.
Interesting to compare this "shunning" with Vista :
Summary : GPLv3 is more popular than Vista
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
You mean the GPL3 is the Microsoft Vista of the open source licensing world?
technical writing / development
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.
GPLv1 and v2 look at free software being sidetracked or misused by private interests who want to subvert it to their own goals. What GPLv3 has done is tackled the opposite problem... private interests attempting to subvert GPL'd code by contributing code to a GPL project which has other non-copyright restrictions attached to it (eg, patents). The idea here is that someone can contribute a key piece of code and have a submarine patent on the algorithm. The entire project becomes popular, things are modified over time, and then bam! Patent holder comes out asking everyone who uses that entire codebase for patent fees based on the algorithm they added. Often that bit of code can be replaced, but that's no so easy to do when you're dealing with embedded software already packaged or out in the real world.
Something licensed that way can be used by both GPLv2 and GPLv3 projects, but can't use GPL3 code itself without converting to GPL3. It's still under GPLv2 until then.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Version 1, February 1989 GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991 GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 3, 29 June 2007 Mind to venture a guess how many non-FSF/GNU projects were created in the 28 months that the GPLv1 was the current license versus how many projects were created in the 16 years that the GPLv2 was the current license? Predicting the dominance of the GPLv3 based on the current usage of GPLv1 is a little disingenuous.
As for the GPLv3 being the dominate license in a few years, I've read that RMS already wants to get a GPLv4 out soon. If it's within the next 3 years, the GPLv3 will barely have time to catch on and the rapid license changes will make the GPL look unstable to non-FSF zealots.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
couldn't say who actually coughed up the money for this one, but they do list M$ as clients. We all know M$ aren't above what we might (generously) call "interesting" techniques when it comes to dealing with the GPL (not least, IIRC, calling it a "cancer"). Evans also list some (what I would call) nicer companies though - especially from the open source POV - including but not limited to RedHat and Sun. You can check out the full list here;
http://www.evansdata.com/company/clients.php
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
It's more likely that a patent infringement would be added unwittingly by a third (or fourth) party. The GPLv3 does what it can, but it can't magically give immunity from patent infringement. Well, except for the case you outlined which is probably the least likely to occur.
Still, SAMBA!
The change from GPL1 to GPL2 was more of a no-brainer. Even Linus adopted GPL2, and he's pretty much on the "business-friendly" side of the spectrum.
The thing that's new about GPL3, is that it tries to not only keep the code itself open and free, which I believe is a valid goal of a software license, but it tries to control *other* behaviors of an organization that are more marginally related to the code itself, such as patent cross-licensing agreements, etc. If a piece of software does not violate any known patents, then the license for that software should not restrict or control how a user conducts their patent cross-licensing or other aspects of their business.
Even though I may agree with some the philosophical aims of GPL3, I have a problem with a software code license that tries to reach out and control general business behavior of individuals or organizations. The GPL3 is basically an attempt to try to force organizations not to just keep the specific code open and free, but to align philosophically with more general business practices.
In a survey of 1 Slashdot user, 100% of the users were found to think Evans Data are idiots for asking Open Source developers if they plan to switch to a Free Software license.
Once adoption of version 3 slows, they'll just release version 3.5 and we'll all have to buy new books anyway.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
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.
The copyright holder may license each different version as he pleases, he may even make a parallel commercial release.
The one able to violate such license is the one who receives the code already under such license.
Does Simon still work there?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
The problem is far more subtle than most realize.
The basic issue has to do with whether or not the BSD code can be "relicensed" (in RMS and Eben Moglen's words) as GPL code without making any changes. While it is clear that copyright-worthy changes can be under any license, the question is whether the original code licensed under the BSD license can be. IMHO (IANAL) this talk of "relicensing" seems like legal mumbo-jumbo devoid of any accepted meaning.
The problem is that the GPL 3 is only compatible with licenses which allow this "relicensing" *independant of* other copyrights being enforced. This is clear in the Rationale documents, and in the opinions of both RMS and Mr Moglen. In other words, it requires that I can extend the requirements of the GPL3 to any and all parts of the code and any dependencies not specifically excluded from the Corresponding Source requirements without enforcing any of my own copyrights in the process.
I think that the BSDL always follows copyrighted elements released under that license and cannot be removed because this would require removing the permission grant from the code. Hence the additional permissions cannot meaningfully be removed without adding substantive code to the file. Because the GPL 3 requires that this is possible by merely conveying the software, it seems to me that this is a big problem. The authors of many of our dependencies agree and out of respect for them, I won't support moving the license.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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