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Most Projects On GitHub Aren't Open Source Licensed
PCM2 writes "Kids these days just don't care about open source. That's the conclusion of the Software Freedom Law Center's Aaron Williamson, who analyzed some 1.7 million projects on GitHub and found that only about 15% of them had a clearly identifiable license in their top-level directories. And of the projects that did have licenses, the vast majority preferred permissive licenses such as the MIT, BSD, or Apache licenses, rather than the GPL. Has the younger generation given up on ideas like copyleft and Free Software? And if so, what can be done about it?" Not having an identifiable license is one thing, but it seems quite a stretch to say that choosing a permissive open source license is "not caring"; horses for courses.
The vast majority preferred permissive licenses such as the MIT, BSD, or Apache licenses, rather than the GPL. Has the younger generation given up on ideas like copyleft and Free Software?
No, they haven't. They've just noticed that licenses like BSD is better open source license than GPL. There's a simple reason for it too - BSD license is truly in the spirit of freedom. Anyone, either open or closed source projects, can use BSD licensed code.
This means younger generation haven't forgotten about open source licenses (BSD is one), they've just chosen the better one of them.
I really like the GPL, I like what it is trying to do.
But over time I've gravitated to BSD like licenses, because I really do want as many people as possible using something.
It's a matter of trust - I trust that generally others will do the right thing, and good changes will come back. It's re-enforced by the fact that contributing code back makes it was easier to absorb updates to the main codebase, selfishly keeping your updates private makes lots of extra work for you over time.
The GPL tries to enforce something that will happen naturally, which I feel is overkill.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is, in fact, very restrictive. If one wants truly free software, one uses a more free license or makes one's code public domain.
You'll incur the wrath of the RMS fanbois if you don't take the GPL. While I support Free Software, there are lots of alternatives such as the BSD and MIT licenses which offer choice. It shouldn't worry folks if they are used vs. the GPL so this really is a non-issue.. Wait for it..
RMS will now go on a tirade in 4...3...2...1
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I personally prefer the BSD license. To me freedom means "do whatever you want with it," as soon as you start attaching strings and restrictions it's no longer free. Yes other people could make money off what I write but if I was worried about that I wouldn't have released it in the first place.
I really wish FreeBSD would keep up with Linux. I keep trying to go back to my FreeBSD roots but the hardware support isn't there, the software choices are narrowing (thanks to gnome3 and systemd) and the FreeBSD team has an "I don't care" attitude when it comes to the desktop.
I see the two comments up top completely missing the point, as does the original submitter.
This is why. And this is because they don't understand copyright law and don't realize that unless they explicitly put the code into the public domain or apply a license, no one can touch it without violating copyright law.
It's probably a mixture of that and outright laziness.
inherent in the free-as-I-say-so GPL. True software freedom doesn't come with strings attached.
BSD Licenses aren't "better" just different.
For the little bits of Perl and C that share with the world BSD licenses are just fine. I'll lose no sleep if they end up in Microsoft's or Apple's O/S.
But if I take the time to write a difficult Kernel driver I'm contributing arduous, "real," "could have been paid for it," work to a specific ecosystem that I want to protect. That's a different level of effort and a different license needed.
Just different.
With all that loud screaming allover, the GPL and common sense can't be heard.
Ignorance is bliss and many of these young project leaders probably are just that, plain ignorant.
I am sure most of those 1.7 million projects have no aspiration to become a real software project. do they have a website, mailing list/forum, releases, users? or are they just random little scripts, snippits and exercises, just put on line for the education of others?
For a large piece of coding i might care about getting bug fixes back. for the script i use to sort my digital photos in to folders based on the date in their exif, and is 50% lines pasted from documentation or stack exchange, i don't care. if you want to know which licences are used for serious projects then grab the top hundred or thousand from ohloh and check them.
Speaking of kids: If you want an example of the latest tempest-in-a-teacup over open source licensing, look no further than Minecraft, which has sold upwards of 12 million copies on the PC alone. As the license for the game gives sole ownership rights of modifications to the game to their authors, the number of mods for the game have exploded. However, few, if any, of the mods for Minecraft are open source, which leads to complete incompatibility between most of them even while using open source APIs like Forge. When enterprising users attempt to gather together collections of these nominally independent mods to distribute in one package, they run headfirst into licensing and "permissions" issues, with many authors refusing to allow redistribution or modification of their work. How ironic.
I have uploaded the meagre, puny code that I've written in a small number of projects without bothering with a license. I expect people to steal it and be quiet about it, because I am the noise floor of github.
Frankly for most projects on github (1.7 million is not a small number of computer software projects), legalese is a bother. It is simply uncouth and considered harmful.
All rites reversed 2010
I work in firmware, and there are significant problems with leveraging GPL code. In general, we can't do it and fulfill security obligations within the critical sector I work in.
I have some hobby projects going on, and I always license BSD, because I want them to actually be useful to someone. In my line or work, we don't even consider GPL code as something that's possible to leverage, and it's not just legal paranoia - it really can't be done in my business and many others.
Personally, this is why I feel that the recent invention of the "automatic copyright" grant is an epic fail. By default all published works should be in the public domain. Only those that are explicitly marked by the author with a copyright and a license should be protected.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
It goes back and forth, developers follow trends.
Right now the trend is to focus on the viral, strict portions of the GPL, which prevent people from using code if they don't want to share back. This trend probably started around the time of GPL3.0
In a few years, people will realize that corporations are taking their code and not giving back, and they'll get upset, and a lot of them will start using the GPL. Then some other life event will happen and they'll switch back.
It's worth mentioning that the vast majority of code on github isn't worth sticking a license on, because it's so short, my code included. I did add a license to my project though, and it doubled the size of the repository. It was embarrassing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Q:How can you draw trend conclusions from it? A:You can't!
And for all you permissive license supporters, get your facts straight http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/02/gpl_d_debian_software_skew/
I suspect that part of the reason many open-source developers don't formally license their work is that they haven't taken the time to understand the differences between all the different licenses. It's hard enough to pick one when you're publishing something that is entirely your own work. It becomes much harder to determine which license the work should be under when it depends on libraries using different licenses.
Personally, I license all my own work under the BSD license to maximize its potential for inclusion into works using other licenses. If I were to use the GPL, I would be restricting the use of my code to projects under GPL-compatible licenses. And that would be a dick move.
I'm going to bet that the majority of github users are on Macs.
10 years ago a *nix nerd would have a completely free desktop. Their 2013 equivalent has had the taste of sweet, juicy, proprietary GUI. They scoff at an X workstation as something nobody would want to use. They like taking from open source because it's free goodies, but they don't want to go "the full Stallman".
I think it's fine to embrace a proprietary software while still using open source, but I do think it's sad that these people don't have more respect for the Stallmanesque idealists. They've had good ideas over the years and they've created a body of great work. It's a shame to see so many consider it "unacceptable" to use a free desktop.
The GPL was created with the notion that every strata of software must be free and open. That's fine and lovely for Stallman but it provides unrealistic restrictions for commercial use. Businesses and individual developers alike donate resources to these communal properties for the benefit of all in a share and share alike manner so that we can focus resources on our real goal--the software we actually want to write and sell. In Stallman's idealistic world perhaps everyone would be communist and no one would care about money and possessions because we'd just step up to a replicator and say "earl grey, hot." But, this idealism does not match the reality on the ground. We depend upon commerce to provide for ourselves and our families.
If you don't like it and want to do something about it then you will have to solve the ultimate problem that has plagued mankind from the beginning, the scarcity of resources, and contention for the same.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I'm sorry, but the entire premise that there is one "best" open source license is completely wrong. Where did this obsession arise to see one license crowned victor over all others, in all situations?
BSD (and MIT and variants) -- I've found they work best for providing backend and reference libraries, which by their nature are trying to provide a standard implementation of something, or at least a standard API. Open and closed sourced projects alike can use and modify it to suit their needs. This means such a library gets the widest adoption over the alternatives (all other factors being equal). This is especially great for server-side programs which want to promote multiple third-party clients - just release a BSD reference client.
LGPL -- A step down, for when you want the adoption level of a BSD license, but your project is complex and high maintenance enough that it needs to keep all the developers focused on a single api and codebase in order to thrive. Graphics libraries like GTK, audio processing libraries like LAME, are a great example of this.
GPL -- Finally, for the same reasons as LGPL, your want everyone contributing back to a single codebase, whether it's because you don't want to give the codebase away to closed source products that then profit from it, prevent brand confusion, or just maximize developer contributions. Mind you, closed source projects *will* choose an LGPL/BSD alternative over this or closed source, so it doesn't make much sense for libraries, etc. Primarily, this is useful for applications, which are vying for user (not developer) eyeballs.
So given they all have different uses that fit better for different project types and target markets, who in their right minds thinks only one of these licenses is correct?
BSD is about 200-250 words, depending on version, with the newer versions being shorter.
GPL is 2000-5000 words, with the newer being substantially longer.
Is one of them really 10 to 20 times better than the other?
Actually, even RMS refers to the BSD and Apache licenses as "GPL-compatible free software". So the GPL and other two popular licenses, BSD and Apache, are all free software by the Free Software Definition. The difference is that GPL is a copyleft license and the Apache and BSD licenses aren't.
Why are the Apache and BSD licenses becoming more popular than the GPL? Because free software has grown up. Where I work, we would not dream of implementing the whole software stack from scratch. We use lots of open-source libraries. My company's legal department is allergic to the full GPL because they want to keep open the option to do exactly what the GPL is designed to forbid -- make a proprietary product using open-source code. Usually our code is custom developed for a specific client but we might want to re-use that and/or make a general purpose product some day.
So, for us, using Apache/BSD licenses is easy. It's almost frictionless. Legal is comfortable with them, and pretty much all we have to do is include the license file and do a quick audit to make sure we've complied with it. GPL is much harder for us to work with because we have to justify to legal why we're signing away the rights before the product is even developed.
The whole point of the Open Source Initiative, as I understand it, is to promote adoption and use of free software. It turns out that copyleft is {sometimes, often} a barrier to that in the business world. So I would say that "open source" (aka non-copyleft) has simply beaten "copyleft" in the marketplace.
Copyleft was a brilliant idea but non-copyleft free libraries are what I use in day-to-day development work. And I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool, sandals-wearing, free-as-in-freedom, latte-sipping, corporation-hating hippie wannabe.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Actually, I think this reflects the success of GPL to a certain degree. GPL kind of put the idea of writing software for software's sake in the public mind. I think what scares people is the legalese that if you use GPL software in any manner you have to open source your code. In other words, they don't understand well enough to make an informed decision.
But I think that it's accomplished what RMS wanted by getting programmers to recognize that they can be successful outside of a product. They're talent is what marketable, not the software. That programmers can make money supporting their product and that if many people use that product you can create a company that supports the product.
When I started programming, lo those many years ago, programmers didn't consider writing open source software because someone would steal it. It's kind of exciting that you can write software that other people can get excited about thereby creating a reputation for themselves.
What exactly would be the outcome of a "GPL-only" world?
Incredible amounts of confusion about what and what is not permitted.
For a past example: the whole "derivative work" issue was a fiasco and frankly, I am not so sure it is completely settled.
The GPL has become a business law assignment - let's put it this way, if I were to start a commercial enterprise that used ANY GNU licensed software, I would have to hire an IP lawyer for advice.
This isn't really a slam of the GNU license - Stallman had very good reasons for the license considering the IP laws in the US - I'm suggesting that the other licenses are much more conducive to new startupts that may want to use open and free software.
I am pretty sure I'm not the younger generation.
And yes, I've pretty much abandoned the GPL, because the GPLv3 is to open source what the anti-circumvention cause in the DMCA is to copyright. RMS had a vision of a cooperative paradise. Then he realized that some people wouldn't play nice, and did what everyone else does when they realize that not everyone will voluntarily adopt the business models they want everyone to use. Tried to figure out a way to make it happen by force.
So, yeah, I'll use the GPL where it's the established license, and some of the stuff I work on ends up being put out under LGPL. But for stuff I write because I want it to be open source? Permissive licenses. Usually the lightweight BSD (no advertising clause) or Artistic, or heck, public domain. My goal is to give stuff away, not to force other people to give stuff away.
It's the same thing that's happened to my morality over the years; I've started focusing more on living according to my own moral beliefs, and less on trying to find ways that society can force other people to do so too.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Has the younger generation given up on ideas like copyleft and Free Software?
Hopefully. And no, nothing needs to be done about it. There isn't anything particularly good about the GPL. It isn't bad (usually), it just isn't that great.
It doesn't prevent proprietary forks.
It violates KISS, a cherished engineering principle.
It is wrought with comlicated incompatibilities with other reasonable open source licenses and with other versions of itself. In this case, the GPL really is bad (i.e. counter-productive).
It tries to solve a problem that doesn't really exist; many companies actively contribute to non-copyleft projects without any mandate from RMS.
It doesn't even support the ideals of the Four Freedoms any better than other licenses. A company that owns the copyright of a GPL project can make it closed-source just as easily as if it had any other license, and a non-GPL project can be forked just as easily as a GPL project if that happens.
The GPL often gets credit for the success of a few great open source projects, especially the Linux kernel. However, the role of the GPL in those projects' success is far from clear, and it certainly discounts those projects; the kernel really is a quality project regardless of licensing terms. It could also be said that those projects were successful despite the GPL. It would be difficult to prove either way.
I'm glad for RMS. He has done a lot of good with GNU software, especially GCC. The GPL just really isn't one of his better accomplishments.
I agree.
I have three projects on GitHub. One of them is practice code I was writing for when I interviewed with Google (don't worry, they didn't ask me a single question that was on the study sheet - but I did have fun writing a splay tree). It was just a bunch of functions with a description of "nothing to see here".
Another project is eventually going to be a GPL project that runs a football pool. Currently it's just a parser that scrapes nfl.com and puts info into data structs. I haven't bothered putting the license file in it yet. It uses another GPL library, so it's already implied that it will be GPL code when it matures past being a bunch of functions sewn together just enough to test them. Why would I put a license on that? So I can be sure that I get changes back for incomplete interfaces? The interfaces aren't even defined yet.
The last project, I can't even recall what it is. I'm not maintaining it and I don't care if anyone swipes the code. It's probably code that scratched an itch that I had that was unique to me.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
I haven't had an opportunity yet to publish any non-trivial open source projects, but when I do, my LICENSE.txt file will simply contain the sentence "There ain't no such thing as intellectual property." and the following link:
https://mises.org/document/3582
Do what you want with my code, and don't bother me about licenses. If you're going to badger me about fantasy concept X vs fantasy concept Y, at least make it fun, like who would win in a fight -- Aragorn or Han Solo?
The GPL (and no open-source license that I know of) can protect developers from other people taking their work and selling it for profit. With the explosion of mobile apps, this practice is becoming widespread and when the GPL, arguably the license that puts the most responsibility on developers, can't even protect developers from what is essentially theft, why bother going with it?
In fact, I would rather go with a simple non-commercial license than GPL/BSD/MIT at this point.
Many of those one point whatever million repos contain stuff that is hardly worth more than this post you are reading now. The intention is that people read it. Perhaps learn from it. Whatever. Should I include a GPL, MIT or any other license to this post? No, so why expect it on my github posts?
By the way. Perhaps there is a generation of kids growing up who think that all this licensing gobbldy gook is exactly that. The license, by it's ommision, is this: "If you think you need a license to use this code, then you cannot use it."
Sounds fair enough to me.
Maybe those people just wanted to share something interesting they made and weren't much interested about the fancy fine print. "Cheers, have fun" is the only license they need.
is optimum for an optimum world. where it fails is in assuming the right to squander knowledge and remove ideas from the public domain, the right to close the source, is a "right." How soon the regents have forgotten their lawsuit with AT&T, and how readily they concede good faith in every major multinational afforded their hard work and the hard work of thousands of BSD developers. Oracle the BSD license erodes security and undermines open source projects by sequestering a codebase that is neither independently verifiable nor auditable on any level. if you consider programmers the means of production, the BSD license enables us to relive the era of controlled production known in the early 20th century.
closed source is to computing as cloistered monks and the church were to the middle ages. youll have your decree read, youll not see the writing, and if you could youd not understand it anyhow.
Good people go to bed earlier.
..what Stallman et al are going for
It doesn't mater "what they are going for."
what MATTERS is what is WRITTEN in the Goddamn license!!!
Jesus Fucking Christ!
YOU people don't get that!!! And it's really aggravating!
The vast majority know they will get bored in a few weeks and the project itself will wither on the vine so it's not really worth any amount of effort even thinking about what license to use.
[...] reuse software in a distributed, "bazaar" manner.
But... but... git is better!
Personally, it's more important to me that OS's are GPL b/c the OS is the playing field on which application play.
It's too easy for an OS developer to abuse their position in regard to applications.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Go on, 'fess up. You only consider YOUR freedom to be worth anything.
GPL doesn't give you the freedom to remove the freedom of others, and YOU count this as being all about restriction.
Tell you what, if you want that sort of freedom, then act to abolish copyright.
But don't complain that laws against murder, rape and slavery are not about freedom (to live, love and exist free) just because you're being resticted.
It guarantees no freedoms.
A guarantee requires restrictions to enable that guarantee.
BSD absolves all restrictions. Therefore CANNOT guarantee anything.
And if your code had MS copyrighted code in it, isn't your code as "infected"? What about someone else's patent? So patents are viral.
No, the problem is that you just hate the GPL.
I believe another reason is because JavaScript development has increased exponentially over the years. For persons like myself, never saw the need to use GPL since you have to share your code anyways in order to use it (code is always delivered to the browser). Also when other major libraries (e.g. jQuery) have chosen MIT, then it's not helpful to choose something more restrictive.
In January 2012, of the top 50 projects on Github, only 2 are GPL: Linux and Diaspora.
Didn't this exact same information get posted a while ago, and then a few days later we got a rebuttal from a different source? The difference is in how you slice it. This article is using the number of projects. If you go by lines of code, I seem to recall it being quite different, and if you went by number of commits, it'd probably be very different as well. Trends in software licensing are not accurately represented by sound bites, and very few studies on the matter seem to be doing anything remotely comprehensive on it. The headline might as well be, "A lot of small projects have no or ambiguous licensing, and the relative growth of different licenses is too complex to trivially measure." However, that's not clickbait because its boring and more or less common sense.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I've created dozens of 'projects' under my account - none of which have any license. I get an idea, throw together some code to test the concept and back it up to Github. I'm the only one who cares about them, and I'd be surprised if anyone ever saw, let alone used the code. If any of my projects were to gain traction, I'd probably consider putting a license on it, but until then, who cares!? I wouldn't be surprised if a large proporation of the 1.7m projects are just like mine - tumble weed territory.
GPL is suitable for some projects,and it is not for others.I don't think that "finally people realized gpl is bad" like most posts here state.I believe people have also turned to alternative licences when needed.And do not forget that many repos on gh are small programs and scripts which are not licenced at all,have a licence like "do whatever you want" or the author just mentioned in a comment #licence:GPLv2 and did not paste the whole GPL text.
I'm not trying to argue that companies don't release source code as required by the GPL. I'm arguing that in many cases companies release changes or source code even if permissively licensed (and thus not required).
I'm afraid I have to disagree with the OP. Most sores are very much open. In fact, mine are even weeping. While it's true that not all sores are festering and oozing, a great many are, indeed, open.
I wonder if someone will get caught stealing unlicensed software hosted on places like GitHub, leading to some kind of a case in which an implied license is discussed. Furthermore, I wonder what kind of license they would decide is implied in that situation (if they decided that there were one) - BSD style, or GPL style?
We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. However, by setting your pages to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view your Content. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories.
"you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories." Sounds pretty permissive to me.
"The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."
Everything I license for public use, I license as LLGPL or AGPL3. If you want to use my code how you want, I charge $150/hr consulting fees. I do not give away my work for free.
You will either allow others to benefit as you have yourself, or you will pay me buckets of cash.
-- a random FSF member.
All of my projects on github are either GPL, LGPL or WTFPL*, depending on the license of any code I borrowed from, unless I've forgotten one, even if it isn't stated in the code or README (because the license is always stated on forum posts where I publish the existence of the projects).
[*]WTFPL is a license commonly used in the Minetest community, equivalent to CC0 or "public domain".
RMS and like-minded ideologs never really understood that most projects that adopted GPL (like Linux or even GCC) did so for expediency, not belief.
One of my favourite programming language is implemented in a non-GPL-compatible way. There are are a few quibbles about SRC's rights to use it and redistribute it as if it were their own if a modified versino ever gets back to them, but basically says that you ca do anything you want with it, provided you release an modified code under the same licence.
Now for technicalities, this is incompatible with the GPL, and it becomes difficult to write software using both Modula 3's libraries and GPL'd libraries. I'd like to distribute binary object code for those benighted platforms where ordinary users don't have development tools, but I can't.
I prefer the original revision though, gives more freedom to the licensee.
"Does not have a file in the project root directory that a computer program can identify as a license" is not equivalent to "is not made available under an open source license".
When they see someone take their code and make a $M off of it the lesson will we learned.
We love you "open sores", especially continously tending to it...
No, it wasn't. The 4-clause BSD license (which is substantially more restrictive than the more recent versions that people usually mean when they refer to the BSD license today) was first used in 1990; it hadn't existed for two years when Linus first released Linux, and it certainly wasn't a "well established" license. The 3-clause version seems to date from 1999. The 2-clause versions are, I believe, newer yet.
Presumably because it was the single widely-known well-established free/open license at the time.
Just time for fact checking...
>Do closed source people share code with BSD people? Nope.
Hmm. Strange, I'm guessing that means Apple doesn't release any source from what they do with BSD source, and BSDI never contributed SMP or anything like that to FreeBSD, and Juniper never contributed anything back.
Read the links, especially the last one.
> Do GPL people? Nope.
For the most part, correct...although there are a few who insist on not converting permissive source code (Luis Rodriguez is the main one .
>Are BSD users against closed code? Obviously not...
http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43
Start with bad data, you'll get bad results.
None of my stuff on Github has a license specified. But then the only stuff I have on Github is a random bunch of Arduino sketches that are of no use to anybody else. Github charges for private repositories but provides public ones for free. So it costs me nothing to be able to view my code from anywhere, even if I just get an urge to double check something from my phone or iPad when I'm out of the house.
I wonder how many of the projects they found without an explicit license are even intended for any distribution at all. Perhaps there are others like me who use version control for code (or perhaps even non-code) that is for their own personal use but is in no way personal or sensitive.
It's about social computing, social s/w development.
it's not about making money, it about who gets credit... much of it is what the kids learned in college--it's all about merit and credit, not cash. Did I just say celebrity (in its various forms) is rated higher than the old might 'dolla'.
Funny thing is now how do we measure progress and value. Really....
"Not Open-Source" and "Not free software by GNU standards" are not even a little the same thing. There's a reason the term "free software" was created in deliberate contrast to "open source."
I seems a lot of programmers are like me, living in both the code-for-fun and code-for-profit worlds and not wanting to prohibit others from using their work in both.
Copyleft is far too restrictive and harms the software ecosystem instead of strengthening it.
Since so much programming work is done in businesses (after 8 hours at work I'm certainly not spending another full 8 hours coding at home every single day) it make no sense to tell all of those developers "none of your work ought to be allowed to be shared with others."
That's what copyleft does, and the reason anyone who wants to contribute their best work from the office back to the world for others to use will not use it. Due to businesses being a real thing that is not going away, copyleft code is essentially "personal projects only" and that's just not the world most programmers live in.
RMS fought for the GPL
Not quite sure what the point was in relation to my post, but I have great respect for RMS, the GPL, and renew my membership to the FSF nearly every year (some years I have forgotten sadly).
It's just that I personally after some thought, think BSD style licenses are free in the way I prefer for my own code. But I agree that we would not have the fantastic range of BSD (and other license) source to draw on had GPL not pushed the idea into the mainstream.
There probably is even code for which GPL makes way more sense. I'm just not sure what that is anymore.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As a general broad swath, BSD may be better for code dissemination, but does BSD-vs-GPL mean anything for code movement?
That is really the key question. I would assert that at worst there is no difference, but on average it would be in favor of BSD - I think people who stay away from GPL code and get BSD code because they don't have to submit back changes, would generally not have used that GPL code to begin with and so you aren't missing anything.
Meanwhile people that would have contributed code back from changes in GPL source would, it seems to me, be as likely to contribute back without arm-twisting for at least the reasons I've stated (keeps YOU from having to maintain a branch).
But I have no hard evidence for this, only the observation of the proliferation of BSD code in IOS development that has a ton of people contributing back to it.
It would be great to see some kind of rigorous study done.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
have you read the source code to your browser to be confident it is secure and not riddled with malware? how about the website you are using? have you read its source to be sure it isnt trying to exploit flaws in your system?
Alright how about we consider that maybe there's projects or files on Github that aren't software. I've recently been looking for a file system to coordinate some engineering project files across multiple users. I was going to use Subversion but was pointed to Git and it seems reasonable. If I'm hosting a project there it won't be software based because I'm not a software guy. It's a good system though for managing project files and I plan to use it. Now am I making my projects open-sourced? Hell no I'm not making my mechanical designs open-sourced or else I'd never make money off them.
First of all, GitHub's motivation is to make money from people who want their software closed, while allowing people who don't mind giving away their source code use the system for free, for free publicity. The actual license isn't really relevant to that. If you are planning to sell your software in the conventional sense, you won't want the source code hanging out there for the whole world to see, so you'll choose a paid account. Alternatively, if you choose a free account, then as a matter of practicality, everyone can get at your source code - regardless if if you mark it with a specific license or not.
More specifically:
1. Even if you fail to put license text in your project, by putting it on github in a free account, you are effectively making it open source.
2. How is using BSD or MIT "not caring"? I care, and I mark all my stuff as BSD or modified LGPL. In the "legal" sense, BSD is more free. You can like whichever one you want, and so can I and everyone else on github. If people prefer BSD to GPL - so what? It's their code, and their choice how to license it (or not).
I use GitHub for all of my projects, and for interaction with my clients, and I'm sure many other freelance developers are the same. While some of the projects I work on are set as public (I'll admit I don't usually bother putting any sort of license out there for those projects â" maybe if I wrote something useful I would) most of my projects contain client confidential info and are private. I suspect this is the same for many others.
I don't think this is some sort of slap in the face for Mr Stallman, but that, for most of us, we are just doing our jobs, and GitHub is an amazing tool enabling us to do them. Most developers don't think about Mr Stallman at all.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it