Is Apache Or GPL Better For Open-Source Business?

mjasay writes "While the GPL powers as much as 77% of all SourceForge projects, Eric Raymond argues that the GPL is 'a confession of fear and weakness' that 'slows down open-source adoption' because of the fear and uncertainty the GPL provokes. Raymond's argument seems to be that if openness is the winning strategy, an argument Michael Tiemann advocates, wouldn't it make sense to use the most open license? Geir Magnusson of the Apache Software Foundation suggests that there are few 'pure' GPL-only open-source projects, as GPL-prone developers have to 'modify it in some way to get around the enforcement of Freedom(SM) in GPL so people can use the project.' But the real benefit of Apache-style licensing may not be for developers at all, and rather accrue to businesses hoping to drive adoption of their products: Apache licensing may encourage broader, deeper adoption than the GPL. The old GPL vs. BSD/Apache debate may not be about developer preferences so much as new business realities."

Comments

Facts and codecs

[synthespian]

First, as *BSDs show, the GPL is not a sine-qua-non for having a pretty good open source operating system. This piece of evidence is frequently neglected by the wishful thinking/fallacious thought process of GPL fanboys or members of the Cult of Stallman. Going further, the adoption of FreeBSD userland code in Mac OS X has allowed for a truly great thing, a Unix for the masses (and, BTW, Apple has contributed code back as well as hired FreeBSD developers).

Second, most big open source projects are business-friendly through their licenses (look in there for the LGPL or exceptions or other licenses): KDE, Google software, Firefox, Perl, GNOME, etc.

Third, to stay away from the obvious, I'd like to consider the fact that there would be other, better, languages to program software in Linux, with faster and safer development cycles. Specifically, I'm talking about Eiffel and Ada that had powerful IDEs and compiler released under dual-licenses (GPL is your project if your project is GPL) but that didn't result in even a bleep on the radar screen of developers. Now, I know there's a cultural barrier (overindulgence in C/C++) but the fact is that releasing dual-licensed IDEs and compilers didn't help.

Third, the Church of FSF gets it all wrong by focusing on "freedom for code." Code is an abstract, inanimate thing. "Freedom" as a category applies to humans. Humans should be free to choose what to do with code. Open-source code can't be "stolen" because the fountain of resource keeps on giving. The Church of the FSF is a moralist cult.

Fourth, there is no way small software houses can compete with huge firms if they release GPL code. Everybody knows this. They'll take your code and give it to their staff. Greenspun wrote about this eons ago.

Finally, fifth, quit with the non-proprietary code hating. Currently, what's needed for the widepsread adoption for, e.g., Linux, is the hability to use a machine as a normal machine. Therefore, we need proprietary codecs, unless all the free software signal processing freaks (you there?) get together on a project like the BBC dirac, which is not happening for whatever reason... Otherwise, e.g., Linux will not be usable. So, the community's got to stop hating on distros that mingle Linux with those codecs, and stop hyping distros that require too much tweaking. Right now, throw some RAM and something like Matisse and Linux can impress people as much as, say, Vista.