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Open Source Project Licenses Trending Toward Open Rather than Free
bonch writes "An analysis of software licenses shows usage of GPL and other copyleft licenses declining at an accelerating rate. In their place, developers are choosing permissive licenses such as BSD, MIT, and ASL. One theory for the decline is that GPL usage was primarily driven by vendor-led projects, and with the shift to community-led projects, permissive licenses are becoming more common."
"Open Rather than Free" implies that there is some charge. Both licenses are "free" in terms of you can use the software without paying. The difference is that any works derived or using GPL type licenses also have to be released on the same license. Whether this is more or less open depends on your point of view.
Free as in beer, or open as in... beer?
Surprise, surprise, yet another anti-GPL study from Black Duck software.
If you look at the work that Apple supports (clang, etc.), they are using non-GPL licenses. Same goes for code on CodePlex (the Microsoft site for C#/.NET open source projects). If you look at any of the ruby, python, javascript projects on GitHub, they tend to use a non-GPL license.
C/C++ projects make up 11% of the projects on github and these tend to be the languages that use GPL.
I personally use GPL for my projects because I am happy with that license, and use other projects that are GPL. Others may not, so they are free to choose a different language.
And we have heard repeatedly from Brian Proffitt that the GPL is dying/dead, but is still being used for new projects. Oh and this is article dated December 16, 2011, so why is this news now?
Welcome to the FUD machine.
MS-PL? Who on earth has ever heard of that license? Perhaps the fact that the only source of the data is a company that is connected to Microsoft has something to do with its mention? The fact that the same company has been emitting anti-GPL propaganda since 2008 is also interesting.
Slashdot, please don't propagate astroturfing.
FUD.
The only time 'users' get involved in legal action is when those 'users' are releasing GPL software as part of a product, and not releasing the source.
If you don't want to get sued over redistributing a piece of software then closed source software must make you piss yourself.
Even by the FSF's definition, "copyleft" and "free" are distinct terms. Every license in the summary is considered free by the FSF: BSD MIT ASL
This is bullshit. It's counting by project, not by importance or size. I'm sure if we counted by lines of code, the GPL would still be #1.
What's happening is that we are seeing new "projects" being created at an alarming rate, most of this projects being wordpress plugins that do nothing important, collections of shitty javascript functions, and themes for various CMS, forums, etc.
Sure, it's full of kids that "just learned" the latest "cool" language (you know the type, Ruby, Python, etc) and just create some project that is either trivial, or is going nowhere past "we uploaded a readme and a roadmap to sourceforge". Half of sourceforge is dead projects.
The truth is that projects aren't jumping ships. No GPL projects are trying to change their license.
I could report "The earth is getting smaller and less important", but the truth is that the inflation of the universe doesn't change the size of the earth, just what percentage of the universe it represents.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The GPL is about the user's freedom not the developer's. It guarantees that the user can modify the source in any way they see fit without the developer locking them out now or later.
Does anyone remember the adage "your right to swing your arm stops at your neighbor's nose"?
BSD is that you can swing your arms however you like and if you wanna punch someone's nose, go for it
GPL says that you can swing your arms as long as you don't punch anyone in the nose
Punching someone in the nose, obviously, is taking open source work and making it proprietary.
So lay off the false dichotomies and admit that freedom is not an all or nothing proposition.
Another example, btw, is having the freedom to drink beer but not having the freedom to rob a liquor store.
From the GLP:
âoeInstallation Informationâ for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information.
This has been used to pressure companies or individuals to give up proprietary build processes or special software. It's not just theoretical, I'm afraid.
Thank you for your thoughts.
With GPL, it appears that all you have to do is submit a change to get your name on the list of copyright holders, and you can apparently then sue on behalf of the entire software package. The original authors don't seem to have to be consulted.
I can't see this working as a matter of copyright law, but I don't know the US way of doing things. To my mind, you'd only have grounds to sue for an infringement in respect of the copyright of which you are the owner — if your change does not amount to a copyright work, I'd be surprised if a court would find you had standing to sue for anything, as your copyright has not been infringed. Making a minor (but still sufficient for copyright protection) change might be the way forward for that, though.
The US also allows transfer of copyrights (which I consider illogical - the creator doesn't change because money or paperwork changes hands)
The creator does not change but, when you buy a house from someone, you (or the bank...) owns the property in that house, not the creator — since copyright is a property right, the same rules apply. (You might prefer to be an author in jurisdictions where moral / authorial rights are regarded more strongly, where it is indeed impossible to assign ownership, as ownership is tied so closely to authorship.)
I prefer to use a more liberal license if I can
It sounds as if, in reality, you're more inclined towards a licence being a statement of intent / request — that you'd like someone who uses your code to do so in a particular manner, but that you are not going to chase after them with a legal stick if they refuse. However, since this would be difficult, if not impossible, to construct as a form of licence, you use a permissive licence to achieve the same ends?
This biggest disappointment to me is that, as with property generally, I cannot choose to disclaim ownership — for most of what I write, I'd rather simply disclaim it to the public domain. Whilst those using my work in an academic context will be bound by academic rules in terms of citation and the like, if someone else can benefit, great — since copyright was neither a driver not an enabler to the creation of the work, I'm unconvinced that copyright should exist over that work, but, since it does as a matter of law, I'd like to refuse to accept it. Which I can't...
Free software is here. We've won. The strict rules of the GPL aren't necessary because people are willing to create, use, and propagate free software without them.
Citation needed.
GPL3 focuses on anti-tivoization and patents. According to your reasoning, that's not needed because companies are voluntarily allowing their users to hack their devices, and they're not patenting software? You must live on another planet. Without an axe to wield like the GPL, free software is dead in 5 years. It's annoying so many people are just so incredibly naive, or corporate brainwashed, in this regard.
Ooh, just off the top of my head
The Linux kernel
Build process?
# make
# make modules
# make modules_install
# make install
Sounds like you got duped by some devious vendor who wanted to ensure years of future support needs from you
In order to have true freedom, then someone must have the freedom to take away any and all freedoms from someone else...
A truly free system will never last, because a few will always abuse that freedom to subjugate others. That's why we have society, where everyone is provided a certain level of freedom while sacrificing some too.
It's a compromise, because going too far either way doesn't work... The GPL works the same way as society does.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Just who in the fuck is Brian Proffitt? Up until now, I'd never heard of him. I can't think of any open source software project he's worked on, or even helped lead.
Maybe I'm just ignorant about his accomplishments. If so, please inform me of them. Otherwise, can somebody tell me why I should care what he has to say about this, or anything else?
He's a tech journalist, which by itself doesn't say if he's technically capable or not. And that, technical capacity is not a function of one's visible/publicized/recognized technical accomplishments in the field in question. There are tons and tons of people out there that have never contributed to, say the Linux kernel or the GCC toolchain, but who, by usage, observation and/or academic expertise (any combination thereof) can tell any random /.er how that shit works.
Your post smacks of arrogance (as it pairs the possible validity of the argument to YOU knowing the author - I mean who are you?). Secondly, your statement has a pedestrian, juvenile ad-hominem'ey nature. One would think /.ers who think themselves acutely intellectual would recognize it as such.
You don't attack a position by saying "who is this?". You do so by asking "what is this", by analyzing the merits of the arguments being written.
If the sole measure of an argument's worthiness of your time is whether the person who makes it is a publicly accomplished figure, then man, you should go tell Muhammad Ali that he was wrong for using Angelo Dundee (who learned the trade of boxing training and being a corner man by being a "bucket boy".) Or you should go tell countless of MMA fighters not to train with Eddie Bravo (who has no MMA record.)
Strategists and analysts (even in the ethereal fields of software journalism) are not necessarily made from being in the trenches or for having delivered an opus dei recognized by the fanboi masses. To pretend otherwise is just arrogance and an inability to argue a piece's worth without having to rely on ad hominem.
I mean for all we know, Proffitt's work is shit, or people feeds him stuff that he then publicizes on his name. But you don't get to that conclusion by saying "who the fuck he is", but by saying "let me try to be a little bit intelligent and analyze this thing if it makes sense or not."
If you don't have the time to do that, why do you bother asking "who the fuck is he". I mean, who the fuck are you to feel the necessity to say that? That's just being embarrassingly childish and sadly spiteful.
The GPL is about the user's freedom not the developer's
Is the user more free because he can't distribute a plugin that uses an LGPLv3 library with a program that uses GPLv2 while exercising the FSF's Freedom 2 (The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor)? Is the user more free because he can't combine libraries using either the Apple Public Source license, the Mozilla Public License, the Common Development and Distribution License or the Apache Software Foundation License (all FSF-approved Free Software licenses) with a GPL'd application?
It guarantees that the user can modify the source in any way they see fit without the developer locking them out now or later.
Any Free or Open Source license guarantees this. If I have some MIT licensed code, for example, I have an irrevocable license (unlike the GPL, by the way, which has some revocation terms built into the license, and more aggressive ones in GPLv3) that allow me to continue to use it, distribute it, and distribute derived works of it in perpetuity. The only thing that the GPL prevents is someone other than the copyright holder from creating a new version and distributing it without granting these same rights (the GPL does not prevent the copyright holder from taking something closed source). In either case, the last open version is likely to be forked if enough people care about it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It doesn't matter what license the source code is under. If you're going to use it and distribute it to your customers, you better be dang sure your lawyer has vetted your right to use and distribute the code and that you are following the terms of said license in the first place. This is just as true for so-called open source as it is for proprietary code that you've licensed. I don't understand why people such as yourself make such a distinction between the GPL and other licenses. If MS produced a utility or DLL you want to use and distribute, you have to know its license conditions just as well as the GPL's conditions. Why is this concept so hard for so many companies to grasp? Complying with the GPL is not hard. If your company has a hard time with that, then yes you are right. You should be avoiding the GPL.
As for your viewpoint about alienation, how is breaking the law and seeking redress justifying the means? Do you treat proprietary licensed code as cavalierly as you do open source?. It's their code. If you don't want to use it in accordance with their license, then get code from somewhere else or write your own code. Plain and simple. Companies getting caught by busybox GPL enforcement just shows how companies are abusing open source software and trying to get a free ride just because they can download the source for free. Since busybox is GPLv2, compliance by these companies is as simple as posting the source tarball on their web site. And actually the GPL only says you have to produce the source code to the GPL'd derivative product on demand.
Small projects tend to work to incorporate into other bigger projects. Large projects stand for themselves, they are not going to used with with other projects, it makes them easier to stay with the GPL, and you are not going to be breaking the GPL easily. The smaller projects are often tools to make bigger projects easier to complete. And a more Open to developers license makes them seem more attractive.
GPL license subscribes to the idea that everyone agrees with GPL Ideals, and has an infrastructure designed to work with the GPL. This isn't the case, some companies sell closed source tool, not because of greed and evil, but because if they open source it then competitors will take over their work, before they can make money off of it, that they need to pay off their staff who are working on their products. No for some organizations their projects work with the GPL other they do not. Now as part of the development progress there are byproduct mini-projects that are created that are not core to the business, and they want to release them so others can benefit. GPL means only people who make GPL products can use it, non-GPL such as the MIT license means more people can use them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
the most open license
Thank you — yes, that's an approach which could be used to approximate the outcome. Similarly, I could use CC0.
The problem for me, though, is that it's an approximation, rather than the real thing. It's a licence, which requires something to be licensable, and, whilst the last attempts to be as far away from a restrictive licence as possible, it only work because of the existence of copyright, which is the very thing I wish to disclaim. Licensing under such terms might be the closest one can get to a voluntary gift to the public, but I still think it's a shame that I cannot abandon "my" copyright, forcing me to use a licensing hack instead.
If someone can write code better than you, that's your problem.
If you don't like it, -- gasp!! -- write your own code in the future.
Stop being all butt hurt cuz you can't take someone's work, make it better, and release to people who were willing to pay for it. In the end, your creation is obviously making the world a better place if you share it, so put it on your resume/cv and move on with life.
But... the future refused to change.
Punching someone in the nose, obviously, is taking open source work and making it proprietary.
So what do you call it when someone copies an open source work and makes a proprietary fork? Because you are making the classic mistake of theft vs. copyright infringement all over again. If I copy your source code I have not taken it, because I have not deprived you of it, which is what happens when you take something. It goes from one person's possession to another and the first party has had something taken.
As it turns out, the first party has been deprived of an unnaturally created "right" to control who may make copies. But is this equivalent to punching someone in the nose, or to cutting in line?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A lot of newer projects are more concerned with getting their source adopted and in use than with making sure users contribute back. And the best way to get better adoption is to use a license that doesn't scare people (and lawyers).
Licenses which aren't the GPL scare me, because I always assume that eventually the critical people will end up working for some company that manages a closed fork.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Back 10 years ago, when they started suing companies who violated the GPL, I figured that this wouldn't turn out good for the GPL, Why because the success of the GPL was based on sharing of ideas, once they brought lawyers into the mix you increased the cost of the use. If people are afraid to get sued for improper distribution of hybrid work, then they will work with less restrictive licenses.
The BSD and MIT licenses encourage sharing, however they don't demand it. One of the side effect of freedom is that with freedom people will do things that you don't want them to do. If you really support freedom, you need suck it up, and not go crying, when someone doesn't want to play at the moment.
Just calling out FUD doesn't mean it is. Sometimes the truth isn't what you want to believe... Sorry...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The GPL prevents the user from having to depend on you for fixes to the software since the GPL requires you to supply the source. The MIT license does not require you to supply the source. This is about freedom for the user. The developer already has the freedom to not use the GPL or software licensed under it in anything they create. As I said already the GPL is about the freedom of the customer not the supplier.
If you're telling the end user that they'll be raped by the DMCA if they try to tweak your proprietary product which was based on my open source project, don't you think I'd be kinda pissed?
This is exactly the sort of thing that the GPL prevents. It keeps you from using my code to be a dick.
My open soruce GPL code is mine just as arguably as your proprietary product is yours.
So how is your freedom to lock out your users and competitors any different from my freedom to not let you use my code to do it?
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If you want the freedom to be proprietary, I should also have the freedom not to cooperate.
This has been used to pressure companies or individuals to give up proprietary build processes...
You say this like it's a bad thing.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If someone can monetize your code better than you, that's your problem.
GPL is for people who don't mind if their code is monetized, in fact they may even encourage it, as long as the code (and derivative code) remains open. It isn't about monetizing, it's about staying open.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Copyleft licenses like GPL have always been ideal for projects where you're trying to build something you use in conjunction with others that use it. It's a community contract for building a shared tool with many contributors where one competitor forking it is a danger. This is great for things like LibreOffice or Webkit. Developers are large users and so long as it is a shared resource no one party gets an advantage.
Open, permissive licenses like BSD have always been better for component level technology or proposed new standard protocols or other software that requires both interoperability and adoption to have value. Things like drivers, services that run communication protocols, and generic system services all fit into this category. In these cases barriers to adoption (like dropping it into a bunch of closed source code) are detrimental to the project as a whole. It's better if MS takes it and incorporates it into Windows, even if they don't contribute anything back.
So an increase in the proportion of the latter category is hardly surprising as technology trends change. The move to mobile devices, cheaper targeted hardware manufacturing, and smaller, more efficient computing components lead to an increased number of projects in this latter category. Building a service to print wirelessly from your tablet? Why wouldn't you want you code as widely adopted and thus as widely supported by printer makers as possible? Does a competitor closing the source on the audio driver you built really give them any sort of advantage over a GPL where they have to give bug fixes back (but probably won't do much since you already made a feature complete product)?
It used to be the only place we saw this sort of development was in the Linux and BSD server markets because hardware costs made it out of the reach of those who built small devices. Now WindRiver and the like are taking a back seat as the market is flooded with cheap, small components. Most everyone in the industry has seen this trend ramping up for a long time. It isn't an ideological shift. We are all still applying the licenses that make sense to our projects. There are just more projects in the latter category now because the environment has changed.
You only have to return changes back to the community if you redistribute the resulting program. You're free to use the altered app privately, including within a company.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There is very much a difference. A lot more licenses are considered 'open' than 'free', even while containing provisions that make it more palatable for the software creators. Look at the 2 lists that I linked to. The ones mentioned as 'open' are simply listed and categorized by their utility, w/o any judgement calls about their ethics, while GNU is more interested in listing them according to their purity i.e. similarity to the GPL itself. So it's small wonder that projects would pick an 'open' but not 'free' license - there are simply more of the latter than the former, and w/o onerous restrictions on software creators.
Contrary to myth, the Open Source movement, rather than the FSF, is the reason we have such major open source software such as Open Office, Firefox, Chromium, Apache, Android, and so on - if you notice, most of them are not GPL, and even Linus has decided not to make his kernel GPL3. If anything, companies like Sun went for things like the CDDL because it is not GPL. Oh, and before anyone says 'Android is Linux', Android is released under an Apache license and not GPL 2 nor 3.
I'd credit the likes of the OSI in helping popularize the Open Source model and bringing it to where it is. Unlike the FSF, it is not hostile to corporate interests and prefers to promote the advantages of this development model, rather than moralizing about the 'ethics' of 'Free Software'. Speaking of which, what is this 'community' that RMS, and you are talking of? People typically buy/download for free/copy software that they want to use, and use it. Most people don't, and won't, tinker w/ source code, nor pay someone else to tinker w/ them - if a software doesn't work the way they need, they either look for alternatives or workarounds.
ESR mentioned some of that in the 'Cathedral and the Bazaar', where he noted that worse than the confusion over the word 'free' was the perception that the FSF was down and out hostile to business. I'd say that that perception is accurate - name me one company (not non-profit organization like FSF) that Stallman endorses. As I've pointed out several times in the past, Freedom 2 of GNU is the poison pill in the GNU charter that makes it the most business hostile model. If a company, otoh, is fine w/ distributing its source code to its customers, but restricts re-distribution further downstream (for the obvious reason that they want to sell to those downstream potential customers themselves, and not have the value of their work diluted by other people who put no effort into it simply distributing it for free or their own profits), then they are more likely to find a sympathetic solution from OSI than FSF, who probably wouldn't give them the time of day.
There is only one case that I can think of where 'free' is a better idea than 'open'. It is the case of when a company is releasing support software for a competitor, like the recent story on /. about a TI employee writing FOSS drivers for QCOM in his free time the same way that he was writing FOSS drivers for TI in his work time. In such a case, it would be a good idea to use something like GPL3, just so that QCOM cannot make use of a non-employee's unpaid work and then include enhancements after making that proprietary. While it would have been perfectly ethical for them to do it w/ their own paid employees, it is somewhat unethical for them to do it w/ work done by employees of their competitors off the clock.
They're two different kinds of freedom, the GPL, like liberalism, uses rules that are technically anti-freedom to actively defend the (in-practice) freedom of the parties involved. The BSD license, like libertarianism, is like setting out a very barebones set of rules (theoretically very free) and hoping for the best.
How does it work in practice? Well which license gets its softeware incorporated into closed commercial products while the developers get a big fat nothing, and which one was updated with new rules when a loophole allowed similar behavior? So you have to choose whether you want freedom in theory or practice.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The LGPL is perfectly fine for tools and libraries and building blocks.
Big corporations can build commercial proprietary products with such tools and libraries just fine. All of this stuff is actually pretty simple once you understand what copyright is actually supposed to be about. There are a very particular set of rights that are governed by Copyrights.
The GPL is being confused and conflated with your usual Microsoft style EULA that can do all sorts of crazy things to expand the rights of software distributor and take rights away from the user.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Example: look at BSD. It was developed at Berkeley, then Steve Jobs took it and closed-sourced it for free. The developers of Berkeley are the one's who developed it, received no compensation from Steve, but the code got closed from THEM, not just the users.
Some of us have used more permissive licenses in the past to find our code used by someone else who doesn't even bother to say hello or mention your name anywhere even if the only thing they changed was the boot screen. So we prefer the GPL family of licenses. Of course you are free to use whichever license you want. Even Stallman is fine with other people using the MIT license.
You're welcome to choose whatever license you wish for your own code of course. But your talk of "[enforcing] Richard Stallman's restrictive ideals" is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worse. GPL was never about being free to distribute the code in any way you want with the code but rather the developer of the code being free, and guaranteeing derivative developers the same freedom. If you don't agree with the GPL, then write your own dang code, negotiate a more suitable license, or leave it alone. It's that simple. You don't need to go off on a FUD tangent about so-called freedoms that you never had a right to under copyright law in the first place.
After so may years of GPL articles you'd think people would actually understand it by now (it's very simple), but apparently now.
I think everyone should be banned from being able to use the word "freedom" unless they are defining what it means. I think its become the strawman argument of the 21st century. One man's freedom is another man's prison.
I wont ever use the GPL and prefer MIT and BSD style licensing.
That's great but it seems to me that those licenses give you less latitude for negotiation with business entities who are simply able to pick up code projects and use it as they see fit. Apple and Microsoft are two fine examples of companies making lots of money of BSD licenses.
To me GPL code was more about the software being "freed" with it's own intrinsic set of rights, specifically, on modification. Which also meant it's possible to create cashflow based on expertise using that software.
Frankly, the GPL is ANTI-SOCIAL as it restricts freedom and creates a burden of enforcement upon those who put the license to use.
Exactly. It restricts the freedom of those who seek to exploit the work of those who develop it. The "burden of enforcement" only exists if you choose to enforce and may only be relevant if your software reaches some critical mass.
If you are unable to capitalise the work then perhaps the market for the software isn't there and it needs a less restrictive license so that someone else can turn it into something that can be capitalised. Personally I always think it's better to negotiate from a position of strength, that's what the GPL allows.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Goodness me, your post is almost totally devoid of facts.
BSD is still open source, the original developers still have full access to it.
Apple's modifications are also open and available, also to those developers.
The original developers received no compensation because they chose to release the code under a very permissive licence. They did this on purpose and required no compensation. You're trying to make it look like Apple "stole" something, which is a totally nonsensical position.
The BSD licence was specifically created for this purpose; it's deliberately very permissive. However, taking that code and forking it does *nothing* to "close off the code from the original developers".
I couldn't disagree more.
These users get more software because intermediate users had the right to alter and redistribute. There are a hell of a lot of devices out there running custom firmware because of this, just as a starting point. Without the GPL you can miss out on an entire class of software - stuff with added value from middle parties in the chain.
Your point... I do not think it means what you think it means.
How can the developers get "shafted" by deciding specifically to release code under the BSD licence by choice, only for that code to later be used exactly as the licence intended?
If they wanted to make money off the code they would ave released it under a different licence. If they wanted to do something more like the GPL then they would have released it under a different licence.
My point is that they were in no way "shafted" because Apple decided to use Darwin as the core of their OS.
I also did not say that OS X was open, I said that their modifications to the original BSD code (in the form of the Darwin OS) are open and available. The whole of OS X is not under the BSD licence but the core Unix parts are - ie, the core pieces that were originally released as BSD back in the day. What? You think the original devs were "shafted" because they don't have access to the entire source of OS X?