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GPL, Copyleft Use Declining Fast
itwbennett writes "Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of licenses is declining at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead, developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."
GPL caused too many problems for companies and tried to enforce all software to be open source. GPL itself was very restrictive license, and it's great to see more open licenses like BSD and Apache gaining usage fast.
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back? Maybe these developers are hoping to get bought out by a large company someday?
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
Exactly. It's like saying you have freedom of speech but you can only say what I want to hear.
That was true with the GPLv2 as well.
Boo hoo, so write it yourself. Why is it every complaint against the GPL seems to come from those who want to mooch and not contribute?
I can profit while using GPL code. I simply can't take and not give back.
everything has pros and cons, we can have something good for "economics" but bad for society as a whole
That is what happens with GPL and BSD
False. BSD has been incredibly good for society. UC Berkeley's sharing of their implementation of Unix is the very origin of the FOSS movement. BSD is where many original Linux developers learned how to do their thing. And where many Linux developers, to this day, find some pretty useful code.
Society generally benefits from the more open and more flexible approaches. Society usually does not benefit as much from the "this is the one and only true path" approach of the zealot.
In my previous job I had customers who were deathly afraid of GPL to the point where they would not allow me as their supplier to use any open source code in the products I supplied regardless of what the license was or if it saved money.
For these people anyway GPL was a real impediment to the acceptance of open source.
Agreed. I think the shift has occurred because of increasing corporate interest in open source. BSD is seen as more corporate-friendly than GPL, when in fact it should be the other way around--BSD allows your competitors to reap the fruit of your labor without giving you anything in return. Start-ups, however, are lured by the idea of being able to close-source everything once their product becomes a smash hit, while established companies face genuine legal issues preventing them from linking GPL'ed code with closed-source code from vendors.
So, start-ups really need to ditch the bait-and-switch fantasy that's driving them towards the BSD. Back in the real world, most such start-ups will fail long before they ever create a popular enough product to pull this trick, and it will partially be due to the fact that they brilliantly gave away all their work to their closed-source competitors for absolutely nothing in return.
The problem with that claim is that it's not even remotely true. For example, consider Google. They have their own private fork of Linux (GPLv2) which includes things like their own filesystem. Some changes are contributed back to the community because maintaining them in a private fork costs more than the loss of competitive advantage from sharing them. Some are kept private, because the scales tip the other way.
In contrast, Yahoo uses a private fork of FreeBSD on a lot of their systems. They employ several FreeBSD developers and contribute a lot of changes back if doing so won't give away a serious competitive advantage, but they keep some things private.
One project has a permissive license, the other has a strong copyleft license, but the behaviour of downstream users is identical in both cases. The GPL doesn't stop you using, modifying, or profiting from the code without giving anything back, it only prevents you from refusing to share the source for your modifications with anyone who receives a binary.
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to most companies GPL == toxic
In my experience, it's a little bit more complex than that. To most companies, the GPL is complicated. They can almost certainly use GPL'd code without violating the license, but their lawyers aren't 100% certain. Their lawyers are certain that they can use BSD licensed code without violating the license. Their lawyers are also certain that they can use proprietary code without violating the license, because they get a license that explicitly permits them to do what they want.
I've seen several cases of the GPL driving companies to buy proprietary solutions: given the choice between buying a proprietary license and using free GPL'd code, they'll pick the proprietary solution and limit their (perceived) liability. If there's a BSD licensed alternative, they'll use that and quite often contribute changes back (after all, it's usually cheaper than maintaining a private fork).
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It's more like having freedom of speech, but anyone who feels like it can revoke it. GPL doesn't restrict freedom, it enforces freedom.
gpl first freedom (0):
"the freedom to use the software for any purpose"
"we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."
from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The cost of distributing someone else's gpl work is licensing your derivative work under the same license. The face up fairness of this deal is what appeals to so many developers. Every license has rules.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
Perhaps the fact that all these new, fancy mobile devices running Android have kernel sources available. I'm sure if it were BSD we wouldn't see anything, and hacking them to do as we wish would be considerably more difficult.
Of course, this is my opinion and you are free to reject it as "invalid" if you see fit.
I see that the Microsoft Public License is grouped in with the other permissive ones like Apache and BSD. Honest question though, is the MS-PL actually a popular choice for non-Microsoft projects? I've never really seen it much, and my intuition says that a decent set of open source devs would be allergic to a Microsoft license.
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Licenses are like programming languages - the right tool for the right job. Some projects - especially those authors want adopted in a business environment - are going to want to go with more permissive licenses. A trend like this says that more and more projects feel they need to be more permissive, not that people are abandoning the GPL. The question becomes why do they need to be more permissive? I'd wager a guess that it has a lot to do with the number of corporations involves in supporting, expanding, and creating open source applications. As for myself, my next two projects are going to be using GPL 2 - but then again corporate adoption of my software is not a goal.
When people say 'Linux' they usually mean Linux-and-all-of-the-associated-cruft. Typically this at least includes GNU libc, GNU binutils, and GNU coreutils (which, between them, are more code than the kernel), and typically the GNU shell (bash) and GNU libstdc++. All of these have no moved to GPLv3 (in some cases with the runtime exemption). Remove them, and even though you still have 'Linux' you don't have a system that can run any of your existing code.
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It's not that. The reason GPL is problematic is that it's all too easy to copy and paste a couple of lines of code out of some open source project into something you're working on. If it's under a BSD license, no problem. If it's under a GPL license, you're screwed. For this reason, the safest default policy for big corporations is to deny all use of GPLed software to remove the temptation.
The result of this is that folks working for those companies are less likely to spend time working on GPLed projects. More importantly, because those companies are not bringing in GPLed source from the outside, they are no longer forced to use that license for their own code. The net effect is that less GPLed code gets produced.
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And even that is not wholly correct. Perhaps this works best:
I can profit while using GPL software. I simply cannot close the source code as a means of forcing my customers into a dependency on me. Which is why the GPL was created in the first place.
It's more like having freedom of speech, but anyone who feels like it can revoke it. GPL doesn't restrict freedom, it enforces freedom.
Yeah, except a company which decides to use and modify open source software without giving back does not revoke anyone else' right to the code... so, in other words, it's not like that at all.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
I'll give you that, but it is just as much a right to want to sleep with supermodels. However, don't confuse the right to want to with the right to have.
Those are basic responsibilities, but you don't have a basic right to them.
Okay, about the code itself. If you are the original developer and sole copyright holder, you aren't restricted by the license. The GPL could possibly be a greater way of making money because you can sell exceptions, and competitors can't distribute a proprietary version based upon the work you've done. If you licensed that same project under the BSDL, your competitors could make a proprietary version. They could keep using your beneficial changes, but you wouldn't have access to theirs. I don't see how that's beneficial to the original developer. I see how it's beneficial to the competitor that builds a proprietary version upon yours, but I don't see why we should be working to benefit those parties.
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I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back. Everyone needs to be paid, some of us just want to be paid in code. For that reason I use GPL, but BSD, MIT, Apache are all good, free, licenses, so I really don't see an issue here.
Sure. GPL (well, GPLv2) software is a car that can be copied an infinite number of times. Its original manufacturer says that anyone can use it, modify it, and repair it, as long as they let others copy it under the same terms. BSD software, on the other hand, says anyone can do anything with their car copies, since the original will always still exist—even people who want to prevent others from modifying, using, or repair their modified versions (i.e. pine-scented air fresheners, fuzzy dice, truck nuts, giant spoilers, neon lights underneath, racing stripes...)
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What? How come every single time GPL comes up everyone automatically assumes that there is a clause that forbids you to profit from GPL-ed projects? I personally modified quite a number of GPL software and, sticking to the license provided the source code along with the binaries AND received a payment.
Tell RedHat that you cannot profit from GPL software.
And to repeat once again — BSD is about freedom of the coder, GPL is about freedom of the code.
Google is using immense amounts of GPL software. Their data centers runs linux. Their own version of it, not shared back. Search, ads, everything Google runs is based on GPL-ed software. They can get away with it because they do not distribute their software, as technically they use it in-house, even though the results of the GPL software is what brings in the dough. They've found a giant loophole (the web) where you do not need to distribute actual software to let (a) people use it, and (b) profit from it.
So yes, the OP was right, and has an excessive flamebait mod: Google is one of the biggest abusers of GPL. Legally, they are 100% in the clear. Morally, less so.
I hate to disagree but it forces not enforces. MIT and BSD licenses are completely free and require nothing of someone using or contributing. GPL requires that anything one creates using GPL code must be open as well. I prefer GPL. There is nothing more annoying then say a company that makes an OS which uses an MIT licensed graphics library or a BSD licensed network stack but at the same time fights aggressively against free and open source software.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The idea about GPL is great - make sure code stays open.
To me it's more a matter of "Make sure people don't go lifting my code and using it for their own commercial benefit (read: profit) without giving something back.". They can give back by making their own contributions to the code available to everyone on the same terms my code was made available to them under, or they can give back by coming to me and paying money for a regular commercial license to the code. But if they expect to get my code for free, no strings attached? Well, they aren't giving their product away for free, no strings attached, are they?
Example are the BSD unices that complain how they cannot use GPL'd drivers and other code, whereas the 'linux/gnu team' can happily borrow code from them. That's up to the very GPL license to fix.
Why should the GPL fix anything here? It's not the GPL side that has the problem. And I'd argue that it's not the BSD side that has the problem either. After all, they're the ones who decided on a license that allows this situation. They're the ones who consider that license better than the GPL. And now they're complaining that their license does exactly what they wanted it to do? If they didn't want that happening, they shouldn't've used a license whose intent was to allow exactly that to happen.
Use Affero GPL for the project in question in the first place. Problem solved.
The freedom the GPL guarantees is the customer's freedom.
It means if you use something you also get to see what it is and to be able to modify it.
Programmers are not an ends in themselves.
So what are you exactly against? People using your code and improving it without giving anything back? Because that is what Google is doing. Why are you exactly against distributing modified code without source, but not against locking in that code in their own datacenters and never giving anything back? Because the end result is the same - they use the code without contributing back. In fact it's even worser, because it also locks users to their services.
I have a good example of this. I've been using Cryptoheaven as my email provider for several years. They open source their client, but not their server side code. This means you cannot actually use the code without also using them, and I've been locked to paying them because I was stupid enough to use their domains for emails while registering to all kinds of services.
Sounds like you needed more competent lawyers then. Linux itself is GPLv2 only, and unlikely to ever change (unless you can simultaneously convince several thousand copyright holders). And any part of userspace that is GPLv3 can easily be replaced with BSD or even proprietary counterparts if you really wanted to.
If you're going to make a statement like "Any GPL v3 code used in the machine would force the maker to hand over to customers on request the CAD blueprints for the mechanisms, the timing involved, down to the color of the engineer farts when the thing is put together," you need to give us evidence. I've read the GPLv3 and I can't think of any clause that would support your statement. I am curious to know what parts fo the GPLv3 you are referring to.
On the other hand, the company stood to benefit from someone else's work without any monetary payment. Now they are paying for what they are using (Windows CE). In some ways the situation with Windows CE is now much more honest. Instead of trying to use linux and get away with it without complying with the license, they are now paying Microsoft for each and every unit shipped (essentially).
Hearing stories like this makes me very grateful that Torvalds had the foresight to use the GPL. Things aren't all well (tivoization), but they could be much much worse. I firmly believe that Linux is what it is because of the GPL. If not for the GPL IBM would never have invested so heavily in it. The GPL ensures that IBM's contributions cannot be used against it, while at the same time mutually benefiting the whole project. Apple chose a different way by blending parts of the BSD kernel with Mach. Has that helped BSD much? Only in exposure. I don't know of any Apple subsystems that have made their way back into BSD.
What is "profit from" also? If I borrow some internationalization code as part of a huge project, this saves the company money from having to buy a propriety product perhaps. More likely though it means we don't implement it ourselves and have less bugs down the road than if we rolled our own. Now does that mean we profited and the original author now gets access to every single line of our code as the GPL would imply? Even if the code is proprietary and our competitors are anxious to get a peek at it? Even if various government agencies disallow giving away the code or allowing end user customization of the machines?
With GPL the return payment is that you must also be GPL in absolutely everything you do. With BSD the return payment is that you give recognition to the author and keep the copyright notices intact. The first type of payment is too high for most companies unless they've got a software model that fits (ie, dynamic libraries, separately loaded programs, kernel modules, multiple cpus). The second payment is much easier but many companies don't know of it and they associate all free or open source software as GPL tainted. So the result is many smaller companies reinvent small pieces of code or libraries all the time, not the result desired if the author wanted to share code.
Sorry but your post does not make any sense. If Google decide to use GPL code then that is fine. If they improve it internally but do not give it back then they can do that but they will either have to permanently fork it and lose any improvements to the GPL version or they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the GPL source tree. Even then they don't 'own' their code which can have legal ramifications down the road, for example if they decide to release a version in Android. The fact you think it locks users into their services is clueless, do you know anything at all about software?
Your example is incredibly poor. Open sourcing the client makes sense as then it can be ported to different platforms. They may not open source the server side code but the data is encrypted using standard RSA asymmetric and AES symmetric algorithms. As they keys will be stored client side you have all you need to prevent lock-in of your data. If you register for services using an email address then, er, yes, those services will expect you to have that email address. If you wish to change then simply create a new email address, and log into each service and change the registered email address. But you are obviously too lazy to do this.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
BSD is about the freedom to make choices for everyone in the distribution chain.
And what I just remarked is what is wrong with BSD... from a GPL POV. Keeping everyone else in the distribution chain able to make their own choices (except restricting anybody else) is, for GPL advocates, more important than you losing the ability to forbid everyone to do anything with the code you "inherited".
GPL is about imposing restrictions ON THE USE OF THE CODE for everyone in the distribution chain.
And that is false. There is one restriction on distribution, and none on use. You don't use software when you distribute it. Please remember that.
It's odd that they consider EULAs to be simple and the GPL to be complicated.
It's more like a total crock of shit.
It's the old percentages game people. When GPL came out there was bugger all open source software and as GPL become more popular closed source proprietary software companies started launching various kinds of open source public relations licences.
Low and behold there are now a whole bunch of other types of open source licences and with proprietary closed source software companies companies playing silly buggers with public relations, breaking down programmes into modules and open sourcing the modules to ramp up the numbers, just so they can crap on about how good they are at sharing.
Just another lame arsed pathetic attack piece. Of course when you want to charge thousands of dollars for a report https://store.the451group.com/index.php?cPath=3&osCsid=gttqeg90f1go39789fobdf4nf2, you have to be pretty inflammatory to pull the mugs in.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Noooo...RMS has said repeatedly the ultimate goal of GPL is to kill proprietary software. You can look up his "GPL VS LGPL" for just one example, but there are several others out there.
We're all adults here right? so lets cut to brass tacks gentlemen, RMS is a militant and seems to get more militant as he gets older. compare GPL V1 - V3 to see how he tries his damnedest to make sure there is NO way you can use GPL unless YOUR PROGRAM is likewise GPL. He also says this in his GPL VS LGPL essay.
You have to remember folks that old RMS doesn't see this as a software thing, he sees it as some "good VS evil" battle where you are either FOR him or AGAINST him, there is no shades of grey, no compromises. Now while he is perfectly within his right to hold that view i think the numbers show that most developers don't see the world that way, otherwise the change to GPL V3 would have saw an uptick not a nosedive.
While the rational thing to do would be to sit down with developers from all walks of life, talk to them to find out what they don't like about the current GPL, and then fix it, sadly the problem with zealotry is there isn't any room for compromises like that and honestly from reading the man's writings I doubt it'd bother him in the least if he was the only one using GPL as long as it remained 'pure'. Remember we are talking about a guy who got rid of his OLPC because the BIOS wasn't GPL and is now using some rare loongson netbook simply because that was the ONLY device he could find that met his definition of GPL compliance.
So the fact that the GPL is going down the shitter as far as usage is concerned really doesn't surprise me and frankly i expect that trend to get worse not better. Life simply isn't black and white and when even Torvalds won't use GPL V3 because its too restrictive that should let you know RMS simply went too far. While i like the idea of FOSS and use it quite often i also know that companies have to make money and developers need to eat But it seems that RMS doesn't feel the same. Of course he is a self proclaimed "squatter at MIT" so he doesn't really have to worry about kids, a car, house payments, etc so its probably easier for him to live in a black and white world than it is for the rest of us.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.