A Year of GPLv3

javipas writes "GPLv3 and LGPLv3 were released one year ago, on 29 June 2007. Palamida, who tracks Open Source projects, has made a study of the current situation of these licenses along with AGPLv3, which was released later, in November. The number of projects that have made the transition to these licenses has grown over the last months, and it seems than AGPLv3 has captured a great interest lately. Black Duck Software, a company that tracks Open Source projects too, has made its own study with similar results, and although GPLv3 and its variants have a good adoption rate, the interviews published on the Palamida site (Stallman, Chris Di Bona) show that the acceptance of GPLv3 has still a long way to walk."

Comments

I believe you mean freedom # -1

[FreeUser]

...the tivo makers would switch to using BSD, or something else with a license that doesn't infringe freedom 2 (freedom to redistribute).

The GPL doesn't inhibit freedom 2 at all, unless you wish to use it to remove freedoms 0-n from everyone else.

What you're thinking about is freedom -1: The freedom to take someone else's work for free, modify it, and put onerous restrictions on everyone further along the distribution change. Or more succinctly put: the freedom to fuck your neighbour. Which yes, the GPL v2 tries to prevent, and the GPL v3 prevents more successfully.

Re:I believe you mean freedom # -1

[mrchaotica]

...it prevents you from creating hardware which will only run approved binaries and distributing approved free software binaries for it.

Not quite. You can even do that, if you also give the user the ability to "approve" binaries himself.

Re:Anyone see much of a difference?

[McDutchie]

Maybe RMS still is a visionary but I think in this case he's seen further ahead in the crystal ball than where we are.

Uh, yeah. He always does. That's why he's a visionary.

Re:I've seen an effect

[junglee_iitk]

Good for you. I personally have written a lot of little utilities (web-applications and other bullshit) which I released in public domain.

I never understood the whole point of BSD, ever. If you want to share the code, so much so that whether I am not using it at all or using it to earn millions is something you don't care, then why are you licensing it?

Not trolling... seriously I am asking.

Re:Political Views

[Znork]

giving all of us the free choice to buy one or not.

And when I donate source code I donate it with the intention that any end user be allowed to modify and run it, wherever or on whatever they recieved that code from. If Tivo wants to prevent the end user from doing that they have the free choice to not use my code.

If the GPLv3 prevents products like Tivo from appearing, then it's a Bad Thing.

If Tivo's abuse of the intent of GPL prevents products _better_ than Tivo from appearing, I'd say that's a Bad Thing. And finding examples where customers would have a better product if they could load modified software on their Tivo ain't exactly hard.

People really need to realize that someone else making money doesn't harm them.

Most Free software proponents have no problem with someone else making money. They do, however, have a problem with someone else harming others.

pseudo-socialism is NOT making the world a better place, just a slightly more egalitarian one

Free software is the epitome of free market economics; it's the enforcement of absolute competition.

Considering that proprietary software builds upon state protected monopoly rights and, as is becoming quite obvious, has more in common with former soviet style state factories (you _will_ use Vista and you _will_ like it; no alternate providers here), I'd say comments about socialism are weak.