GPL, Copyleft Use Declining Fast 808
itwbennett writes "Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of licenses is declining at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead, developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."
BSD license was always more permissive, so great (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back? Maybe these developers are hoping to get bought out by a large company someday?
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
GPLv3 threw out the baby with the bathwater... (Score:2, Insightful)
When companies realized that if they ship GPL v3 code in any way, shape, or form, a customer could demand any trade secrets from them, the legal bean counters went nuts.
An example would be a machine that skins oranges. Any GPL v3 code used in the machine would force the maker to hand over to customers on request the CAD blueprints for the mechanisms, the timing involved, down to the color of the engineer farts when the thing is put together.
I personally have seen companies who had to re-engineer a whole embedded controller from Linux to Windows CE just so they did not bump into GPL v3 issues.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
Film at 11. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:1, Insightful)
there would be no pirates with pure GPL software, technology is supposed to be for the good of all, not to enrich a few guys.
And yes, I know I'm being utopic, but that is true
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:3, Insightful)
I have yet to see any evidence that GPL creates more benefit for society than any other FOSS licence. Can you provide anything?
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the freedom to profit? It is a right for people to want to make money and why is that bad? Student loans, kids, retirement, and a car are considered basic rights and responsibilities. Aint got no money? Then you cant have any of it? Cry all you want but the grocery store doesnt care that you do great things for humanity when your kids are hungry. They just want your money.
So your rights if you own the code are important too. Thats life
Yes I advocate the BSD license.
BSD greatly benefited society. (Score:5, Insightful)
everything has pros and cons, we can have something good for "economics" but bad for society as a whole
That is what happens with GPL and BSD
False. BSD has been incredibly good for society. UC Berkeley's sharing of their implementation of Unix is the very origin of the FOSS movement. BSD is where many original Linux developers learned how to do their thing. And where many Linux developers, to this day, find some pretty useful code.
Society generally benefits from the more open and more flexible approaches. Society usually does not benefit as much from the "this is the one and only true path" approach of the zealot.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the only way to make money is to take open source software and ensure that the recipients of your modified version cannot have the source code? Or that the source code must absolutely be integrated deeply into yours?
I know, those pesky anti-DRM requirements sure make it hard to squeeze your users for money.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I think the shift has occurred because of increasing corporate interest in open source. BSD is seen as more corporate-friendly than GPL, when in fact it should be the other way around--BSD allows your competitors to reap the fruit of your labor without giving you anything in return. Start-ups, however, are lured by the idea of being able to close-source everything once their product becomes a smash hit, while established companies face genuine legal issues preventing them from linking GPL'ed code with closed-source code from vendors.
So, start-ups really need to ditch the bait-and-switch fantasy that's driving them towards the BSD. Back in the real world, most such start-ups will fail long before they ever create a popular enough product to pull this trick, and it will partially be due to the fact that they brilliantly gave away all their work to their closed-source competitors for absolutely nothing in return.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
to most companies GPL == toxic
In my experience, it's a little bit more complex than that. To most companies, the GPL is complicated. They can almost certainly use GPL'd code without violating the license, but their lawyers aren't 100% certain. Their lawyers are certain that they can use BSD licensed code without violating the license. Their lawyers are also certain that they can use proprietary code without violating the license, because they get a license that explicitly permits them to do what they want.
I've seen several cases of the GPL driving companies to buy proprietary solutions: given the choice between buying a proprietary license and using free GPL'd code, they'll pick the proprietary solution and limit their (perceived) liability. If there's a BSD licensed alternative, they'll use that and quite often contribute changes back (after all, it's usually cheaper than maintaining a private fork).
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
gpl first freedom (0):
"the freedom to use the software for any purpose"
"we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."
from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The cost of distributing someone else's gpl work is licensing your derivative work under the same license. The face up fairness of this deal is what appeals to so many developers. Every license has rules.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the fact that all these new, fancy mobile devices running Android have kernel sources available. I'm sure if it were BSD we wouldn't see anything, and hacking them to do as we wish would be considerably more difficult.
Of course, this is my opinion and you are free to reject it as "invalid" if you see fit.
Re:Fine with me, GPLv3 sucks for business (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that. The reason GPL is problematic is that it's all too easy to copy and paste a couple of lines of code out of some open source project into something you're working on. If it's under a BSD license, no problem. If it's under a GPL license, you're screwed. For this reason, the safest default policy for big corporations is to deny all use of GPLed software to remove the temptation.
The result of this is that folks working for those companies are less likely to spend time working on GPLed projects. More importantly, because those companies are not bringing in GPLed source from the outside, they are no longer forced to use that license for their own code. The net effect is that less GPLed code gets produced.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more like having freedom of speech, but anyone who feels like it can revoke it. GPL doesn't restrict freedom, it enforces freedom.
Yeah, except a company which decides to use and modify open source software without giving back does not revoke anyone else' right to the code... so, in other words, it's not like that at all.
Re:It stopped being about the software (Score:4, Insightful)
Which strikes an anti DMCA nerve with Big Content folks who don't want to lose the leash they have their users bound by.
Telling a commercial company to use the GPL is like telling an alcoholic to lob a nuke at the brewery.
Companies LOVE screwing their users over, and giving that up is too hard.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
it enforces freedom
You're gonna be free wether you like it or not!
The freedoms are rivalrous -- you're free to distribute a piece of software however you please, or you're free to extend a piece of software however you please. The first one is a commerce right, the second one is a moral right. Both of these can't always be satisfied.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll give you that, but it is just as much a right to want to sleep with supermodels. However, don't confuse the right to want to with the right to have.
Those are basic responsibilities, but you don't have a basic right to them.
Okay, about the code itself. If you are the original developer and sole copyright holder, you aren't restricted by the license. The GPL could possibly be a greater way of making money because you can sell exceptions, and competitors can't distribute a proprietary version based upon the work you've done. If you licensed that same project under the BSDL, your competitors could make a proprietary version. They could keep using your beneficial changes, but you wouldn't have access to theirs. I don't see how that's beneficial to the original developer. I see how it's beneficial to the competitor that builds a proprietary version upon yours, but I don't see why we should be working to benefit those parties.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Awareness (Score:2, Insightful)
I think developers nowadays are just more aware of the various licenses and their implications. Jump back 10 years ago, a lot of devvers were like 'i've got this great piece of code, i want to share it. let's pick a license - o, GPL was the best license, right? let's release it GPL'. And only later came to the conclusion how inconvenient said license was.
Every license gots it's place. The problem with GPL is, is that's it's walling off it's very own garden - it is only compatible with other GPL libraries.
Another differentation to make is: application versus library. For applications, GPL is often very well suited. For libraries, it's a nightmare as it restricts usage. Yes, there is LGPL and no, it hardly helps.
As (amateur) developer myself, i began to favor BSD-styled licenses, whereever possible. GPL bites too often in your toes, if you don't watch out. It's a nice license, but highly situational. And it is a restrictive license, not an open one. Restrictive in a way that only compares to closed source.
The idea about GPL is great - make sure code stays open. The practice is: is there any need for that? There are many projects with *random* licenses, that work well, just because there is a team around it, involved in active developing. The focus should more be on 'how do we get this code better' than 'how do we restrict usage'. And the power exists in the mere fact that there's a team, not a codebase.
Personally, i wish the next GPL license would be more open, in the sense of: you can protect this very piece of code, but remove the 'viral' part from it, and allow usage in any further license. Example are the BSD unices that complain how they cannot use GPL'd drivers and other code, whereas the 'linux/gnu team' can happily borrow code from them. That's up to the very GPL license to fix. Same applies to closed source - i bet a company would happily show code of a GPL library they used, and possibly modified, if it was only limited to that.
Last not least.. No, that neat piece of code you wrote in the last 3 days isn't that special. Why bother someone stealing or profiting from it in the first place. A company that profits from your code may indeed do so, the difference is, you didn't have that company, so it's a bogus comparison to start with. But it you would happen to have a company, wouldn't you be pleased to be able to use existing code? Not re-inventing wheels, and cutting costs a bit, freeing up developer time for more challenging tasks? Yet, as thousand others wrote above, you would stay away from GPL code for obvious reasons.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is using immense amounts of GPL software. Their data centers runs linux. Their own version of it, not shared back. Search, ads, everything Google runs is based on GPL-ed software. They can get away with it because they do not distribute their software, as technically they use it in-house, even though the results of the GPL software is what brings in the dough. They've found a giant loophole (the web) where you do not need to distribute actual software to let (a) people use it, and (b) profit from it.
So yes, the OP was right, and has an excessive flamebait mod: Google is one of the biggest abusers of GPL. Legally, they are 100% in the clear. Morally, less so.
Look ma I know statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to invalidate the outcome of the report (though the hyperbole could do with some work) but this arbitrary 'percentage' assignment has me wondering. Could this not just reflect a new growth in say Rails projects or Javascript (the Ruby community is traditionally MIT/BSD, see too very common frameworks like jQuery). In the past code like this was rarely included, but this might just represent the true makeup of the community and fast LOC growth in one community doesn't mean the other community is jumping ship to a different license.
Don't be studid (Score:2, Insightful)
How can you be an "abuser" of the GPL if you are adhering to the terms of the license? Oh wait, freetards want to take away even the freedoms granted by the GPL ...
The BSD license is more free than the GPL, both for the coder, for the end user, and for everyone in between.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not what it actually means at all. [wikipedia.org]
The fact that people defending the commercial viability of GPL'd software always trot out the same tiny number of examples is incredibly telling.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to disagree but it forces not enforces. MIT and BSD licenses are completely free and require nothing of someone using or contributing. GPL requires that anything one creates using GPL code must be open as well. I prefer GPL. There is nothing more annoying then say a company that makes an OS which uses an MIT licensed graphics library or a BSD licensed network stack but at the same time fights aggressively against free and open source software.
Re:Awareness (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea about GPL is great - make sure code stays open.
To me it's more a matter of "Make sure people don't go lifting my code and using it for their own commercial benefit (read: profit) without giving something back.". They can give back by making their own contributions to the code available to everyone on the same terms my code was made available to them under, or they can give back by coming to me and paying money for a regular commercial license to the code. But if they expect to get my code for free, no strings attached? Well, they aren't giving their product away for free, no strings attached, are they?
Example are the BSD unices that complain how they cannot use GPL'd drivers and other code, whereas the 'linux/gnu team' can happily borrow code from them. That's up to the very GPL license to fix.
Why should the GPL fix anything here? It's not the GPL side that has the problem. And I'd argue that it's not the BSD side that has the problem either. After all, they're the ones who decided on a license that allows this situation. They're the ones who consider that license better than the GPL. And now they're complaining that their license does exactly what they wanted it to do? If they didn't want that happening, they shouldn't've used a license whose intent was to allow exactly that to happen.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
The freedom the GPL guarantees is the customer's freedom.
It means if you use something you also get to see what it is and to be able to modify it.
Programmers are not an ends in themselves.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:3, Insightful)
You're gonna be free wether you like it or not!
This would be a great view of things if you could just compare BSD/MIT to GPL. Unfortunately, you have to take into account that there's also copyright and other laws which do also impose a "whether you like it or not!" situation that many people -in particular those having to deal with software development- end up very much not liking.
The GPL licenses are trying to work around various un-sane defaults in copyright. And the BSD/MIT licenses are really only deferral of all rights to the next party, which then -by default or intentionally- would just apply the very restrictive copyright as usual, or pull some shenanigans with DRM, or other things.
Either way you get a "whether you like it or not" situation. But I see the one where all people get more rights as opposed to deferral of this decision to the next person in line as the better solution.
Re:Don't be stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Just look at Apple - the company with the most worth in the whole world - selling software that was built upon FreeBSD.
And not contributing anything back to the community. Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost. On the other hand, when a big GPL vendor falls or discontinues a product, anybody can come in and keep it alive from the last public release.
Re:GPLv3 threw out the baby with the bathwater... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you needed more competent lawyers then. Linux itself is GPLv2 only, and unlikely to ever change (unless you can simultaneously convince several thousand copyright holders). And any part of userspace that is GPLv3 can easily be replaced with BSD or even proprietary counterparts if you really wanted to.
If you're going to make a statement like "Any GPL v3 code used in the machine would force the maker to hand over to customers on request the CAD blueprints for the mechanisms, the timing involved, down to the color of the engineer farts when the thing is put together," you need to give us evidence. I've read the GPLv3 and I can't think of any clause that would support your statement. I am curious to know what parts fo the GPLv3 you are referring to.
On the other hand, the company stood to benefit from someone else's work without any monetary payment. Now they are paying for what they are using (Windows CE). In some ways the situation with Windows CE is now much more honest. Instead of trying to use linux and get away with it without complying with the license, they are now paying Microsoft for each and every unit shipped (essentially).
Hearing stories like this makes me very grateful that Torvalds had the foresight to use the GPL. Things aren't all well (tivoization), but they could be much much worse. I firmly believe that Linux is what it is because of the GPL. If not for the GPL IBM would never have invested so heavily in it. The GPL ensures that IBM's contributions cannot be used against it, while at the same time mutually benefiting the whole project. Apple chose a different way by blending parts of the BSD kernel with Mach. Has that helped BSD much? Only in exposure. I don't know of any Apple subsystems that have made their way back into BSD.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
What is "profit from" also? If I borrow some internationalization code as part of a huge project, this saves the company money from having to buy a propriety product perhaps. More likely though it means we don't implement it ourselves and have less bugs down the road than if we rolled our own. Now does that mean we profited and the original author now gets access to every single line of our code as the GPL would imply? Even if the code is proprietary and our competitors are anxious to get a peek at it? Even if various government agencies disallow giving away the code or allowing end user customization of the machines?
With GPL the return payment is that you must also be GPL in absolutely everything you do. With BSD the return payment is that you give recognition to the author and keep the copyright notices intact. The first type of payment is too high for most companies unless they've got a software model that fits (ie, dynamic libraries, separately loaded programs, kernel modules, multiple cpus). The second payment is much easier but many companies don't know of it and they associate all free or open source software as GPL tainted. So the result is many smaller companies reinvent small pieces of code or libraries all the time, not the result desired if the author wanted to share code.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but your post does not make any sense. If Google decide to use GPL code then that is fine. If they improve it internally but do not give it back then they can do that but they will either have to permanently fork it and lose any improvements to the GPL version or they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the GPL source tree. Even then they don't 'own' their code which can have legal ramifications down the road, for example if they decide to release a version in Android. The fact you think it locks users into their services is clueless, do you know anything at all about software?
Your example is incredibly poor. Open sourcing the client makes sense as then it can be ported to different platforms. They may not open source the server side code but the data is encrypted using standard RSA asymmetric and AES symmetric algorithms. As they keys will be stored client side you have all you need to prevent lock-in of your data. If you register for services using an email address then, er, yes, those services will expect you to have that email address. If you wish to change then simply create a new email address, and log into each service and change the registered email address. But you are obviously too lazy to do this.
Phillip.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
BSD is about the freedom to make choices for everyone in the distribution chain.
And what I just remarked is what is wrong with BSD... from a GPL POV. Keeping everyone else in the distribution chain able to make their own choices (except restricting anybody else) is, for GPL advocates, more important than you losing the ability to forbid everyone to do anything with the code you "inherited".
GPL is about imposing restrictions ON THE USE OF THE CODE for everyone in the distribution chain.
And that is false. There is one restriction on distribution, and none on use. You don't use software when you distribute it. Please remember that.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:2, Insightful)
The rest of your argument is based on that misinterpretation and is invalid.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem with the GPL is that it is viral, that is why companies avoid it. There were loopholes in GPLv2, but now are closed in GPLv3 and companies avoid it like the plague.
Use GPL?
- Everything that links against it much be open source
- Free all your patents
- Must open all hardware so that code can be replaced (Good luck with subsidized hardware models)
Open Source Code is largely made by companies, make licenses hostile to companies and those companies will only participate in projects that have nice licenses, this explains the shift in licensing
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's odd that they consider EULAs to be simple and the GPL to be complicated.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:4, Insightful)
they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the GPL source tree.
The same situation as in the common case when they do release their patches, but King Chief Committer does not consider your puny code worthy of notice and refuses to merge in your filthy changes in the pristine head branch, which is only for King Chief Committer and his inner cicrle of nerds.
Re:BSD license was always more permissive, so grea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more like a total crock of shit.
It's the old percentages game people. When GPL came out there was bugger all open source software and as GPL become more popular closed source proprietary software companies started launching various kinds of open source public relations licences.
Low and behold there are now a whole bunch of other types of open source licences and with proprietary closed source software companies companies playing silly buggers with public relations, breaking down programmes into modules and open sourcing the modules to ramp up the numbers, just so they can crap on about how good they are at sharing.
Just another lame arsed pathetic attack piece. Of course when you want to charge thousands of dollars for a report https://store.the451group.com/index.php?cPath=3&osCsid=gttqeg90f1go39789fobdf4nf2 [the451group.com], you have to be pretty inflammatory to pull the mugs in.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)