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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.
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
Ooh, I can twist this one around:
That's a good one!
What exactly would be the outcome of a "GPL-only" world?
Meh, there's plenty of substantial work (coulda-been-paid-for-it) on GitHub.
However, it's is nearly all web-related. And the GPL doesn't offer much for web code, because the resulting application is rarely "distributed" beyond the company who built it. BSDish licenses are just a better fit for what they're trying to accomplish.
In the case of commercial applications, I like to think of the GPL as the asking price for my software. You're always free to re-negotiate if it's too high.
Go compare Linux and BSD then think about it for a while.
Some folks will not contribute back if they can avoid it.
I like BSD for somethings, boring stuff that gets shared and used everywhere. SSH, SSL that sort of thing, but if you want your new whiz-bang thing to get code back GPL is better for that.
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/
I first considered Gnu Scientific Library, but if I used this I would have to GPL my own code
If you think so, you're suffering a major failure of imagination. You can always find a practical way for non-GPL code to interact with GPL code that doesn't subject it to the GPL. Worst case, you build a light-weight wrapper around the GPL code and run it in a separate process. The beauty of it is that the authors of the GPL code can't even say nay: the GPL expressly forbids them from modifying it terms to disallow that higher level interaction.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
No my argument is that if the FSF wanted GPL software to be used only with other GPL software, they'd have written the license that way. They didn't. They wrote the license so that if you link with the code yours becomes GPL but if you merely use the programs together, it doesn't. So, make your improvements to the GPL code, release your improvements to the GPL code and if you want to keep the rest of your application closed source then do it. We'll appreciate what you chose to contribute and those of us with a brain will respect your choice for the things you chose not to contribute. We probably won't use the closed source parts, but we'll respect your choice.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
This line of reasoning also brings us down another familiar path--the cognitive dissonance among Free Software folks concerning "theft". When you discuss "piracy" they are all on board with the idea that "IP can't be stolen because it isn't property, and you still have the first copy", but when you mention permissive licensing they immediately complain that it allows companies to steal code.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?