GPL, Copyleft On the Rise

paxcoder writes "Contrary to earlier analyses that predicted a decline of copyleft software share to as little as 50% this year, John Sullivan, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, claims the opposite has happened: In his talk at FOSDEM 2012 titled 'Is Copyleft Being Framed?,' Sullivan presented evidence (PDF) of a consistent increase of usage of copyleft licenses in relation to the usage of permissive licenses in free software projects over the past few years. Using publicly available package information provided by the Debian project, his study showed that the number of packages using the GPL family in that distribution this year reached a share of 93% of all packages with (L)GPLv3 usage rising 400% between the last two Debian versions."

Comments

Cherrypicking sources

[Barbara, not Barbie]

The earlier study looked at a much broader base of projects, not just cherry-picking by limiting itself to packages in a distro.

Re:Cherrypicking sources

[Anonymous Coward]

"The earlier study looked at a much broader base of projects, not just cherry-picking by limiting itself to packages in a distro."

Good point. The update in the On the continuing decline of the GPL article also mentions this: "UPDATE – It is has been rightfully noted that this decline relates to the proportion of all open source software, while the number of projects using the GPL family has increased in real terms. Using Black Duck’s figures we can calculate that in fact the number of projects using the GPL family of licenses grew 15% between June 2009 and December 2011, from 105,822 to 121,928. However, in the same time period the total number of open source projects grew 31% in real terms, while the number of projects using permissive licenses grew 117%. – UPDATE"

Re:Cherrypicking sources

[rtfa-troll]

And doesn't Debian actually actively work for make sure the packages it distributes are GPL?

Not at all. They just tend to make selections of the projects which actually work rather than the hundreds of projects that never go anywhere. The Debian Free Software Guidelines mean that main distribution software has to be free, but basically anyone who has motivation and acceptable software can get their package in.

Simply put, if a package isn't in Debian then it mostly very specialised, quite new or isn't worth touching. If there are several Debian packages and you don't know which to go for, then go for the one which is in Red Hat since that will be the most professionally maintained package.

The first survey may have been representative of packages which people start developing, but this is more representative of packages which are actually useful.

Re:Pro-GPL study from authors of GPL ...

[rtfa-troll]

You left out the part where the pro-GPL study comes from the authors and advocates of the GPL.

Thanks for the hint (its astounding the way that accusations from shills so often point you in the direction of what they themselves are doing). You left out the fact that the original data came from a Microsoft partner involved in Codeplex. Immediately I saw your post I thought to search for that.

Re:Makes sense

[rtfa-troll]

it restricts you from editing the source code, because you become liable to all sorts of legal responsibilities if you do so.''''

No it doesn't. You can edit privately and use the software internally in your company and never even have to touch the terms of the GPL. On the other hand, if you never edit the software, but you distribute the software then you normally need to follow the terms of the GPL even if you have never edited it.

Interestingly enough, some of the largest IT companies, like IBM, Oracle, RedHat, Ubuntu and even Microsoft disagree with you and happily work with and distribute GPL software.

Re:The sad part.

[maxwell demon]

The only freedom the GPL restricts is your freedom to restrict the freedom of others.