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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
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 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.
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."
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.