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Almost Two-Thirds of Software Companies Contributing To Open Source, Says Survey (networkworld.com)

Posted by msmash on from the open-source-ftw dept.

Reader alphadogg writes: Open source's march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey released by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge. Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey -- which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents -- said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That's a 5% increase from the previous year's survey.

1 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Important to note: the GPL is NOT being used! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    One thing I find very interesting is how nearly all are opting to not use and/or contribute to software with a license from the GPL family.

    These businesses are generally using software licensed under the MIT and BSD licenses.

    It does make sense, though. The MIT and BSD licenses are very pragmatic, and meet the needs of businesses and end users alike. The GPL family of licenses, on the other hand, are driven by ideology and a perverse sense of freedom-but-with-significant-of-restrictions.

    The MIT and BSD licenses maximize freedom for developers and users. The GPL family of licenses, on the other hand, gives slightly more control to the developer, but removes a lot of freedom from the users of said code.

    In a free-market environment, businesses will opt to deal with software having truly free licenses like the MIT and BSD licenses, rather than free-in-hype-only licenses like the GPL family of licenses.